Legacy

Witness the piper come for his pay:

An Iraqi town has unveiled a giant monument of a shoe in honour of the journalist who threw his footwear at former U.S. President George W. Bush.

The two-metre (six-foot) high statue, unveiled Thursday in former dictator Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, depicts a bronze-coloured shoe, filled with a plastic shrub. "Muntazer: fasting until the sword breaks its fast with blood; silent until our mouths speak the truth," reads an inscription, in honour of journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at Bush and called him a "dog" at a news conference during the former president's final visit to Iraq.

Fatin Abdul Qader, head of an orphanage and children's organisation in the town, said the one-and-a-half-tonne monument by artist Laith al-Amiri was titled "statue of glory and generosity."

"This statue is the least expression of our appreciation for Muntazer al-Zaidi, because Iraqi hearts were comforted by his throw," she said.

That is your appreciation for thousands of wasted American lives and trillions of wasted dollars, George.

That is the fruit of 'nation-building' and trying to make a gift of something that cannot be given, but must be earned.

That is what you reap for trying to befriend barbarians instead of making them fear you.

Ronald Reagan understood these truths. You, Mr. Bush, do not. So this is your legacy: Be an empire, or be a republic. It is impossible to walk a line between the two.