The Image of War

A stunning article in the Post today on the prisoner photos, and the brutality itself. Among other ruminations, Philip Kennicott notes that America has lost control over the image of this war, and that the aggression of occupation brutalizes the occupier in a different but parallel way to the brutalization of the occupied. Do read it...

A Wretched New Picture Of America :

Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.