That <a href=”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4.html”>Philip Kennicott is something else–a ludicrous, outrageous attack on us.

And I mean “us” literally. Kennicott condemns American society as a whole for the actions of a few out-of-control prison guards in Iraq.

“Look at these images closely and you realize that they can’t just be the random accidents of war, or the strange, inexplicable perversity of a few bad seeds…we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done…These photos ARE us.” [emphasis in the original].

Kennicott goes on to compare us to the colonial powers of old Europe (America is an empire, remember?) and he even somehow links the crimes of Abu Ghraib to the popularity of internet porn.

You know, if a conservative Christian wrote an essay linking sex crimes and child abuse to the widespread availability of porn, the Washington Post would toss it into the circular file. But there is no attack on the war effort so ridiculous and irrational that it will not appear in my morning paper.