We Lost Some Wars

The steel sculpture that now sits in front of the new UPenn nanotechnology building was originally installed, in 1966, where the "Love" statue is now. The first just disappeared one day (exactly when is unclear); the second appeared in 1998.

The older piece is by Tony Smith, entitled We Lost. While it stood in the middle of the campus, the title was adopted by the anti-war movement as a reference to the Vietnam War, though the artist had a different, mundane explanation.

But the popular interpretation of the title is the better one, and now We Lost is with us again, just as our government wraps up an unsuccessful war in Afghanistan, and George W. Bush launches his career as a lousy artist.

The news coverage of the former president's pathetic presentations may help us all forget that Mr. Bush started the war in Iraq, for no good reason and plenty of evil reasons, and then WE LOST that war.

Let me step outside of my own beliefs for the moment and pretend that US presidents have the right to start wars when they wish to. If that were true, then he's supposed to win. Also, the war should have a plausible explanation, for the official record. But the Iraq War did not follow even those entirely wrong guidelines.

George W. Bush has had a dismal life. He became Governor of Texas, then US President only because his father had been along the road of power, being very smart, he worked very hard, and because he kept his optional war brief and "successful" in the military sense. Now, as a former president, George W. Bush is one of history's dirty little relics. Others of that small club play important roles in world affairs, but not Bush II. The mainstream Media treat him with a ridiculous gentleness, as though to say, the less said, the better.