>From Pollitt's piece
>
> Unfortunately, anyone who tries to talk about the WTC attack in this
> way--as Susan Sontag did in her entirely reasonable but now infamous
> New Yorker piece--is likely to find themselves labeled a traitor, a
> coward, anti-American or worse. (I found this out myself when I made
> the mistake of going on the radio with mad Andrew Sullivan, who has
> said the "decadent left...may well mount a fifth column," and who
> accused me of objectively supporting the Taliban and likened me to
> someone who refuses to help a rape victim and blames her for wearing
> a short skirt.) But a war can be "just" in the sense that it is a
> response to aggression--as Vietnam was not--and also be the wrong way
> to solve a problem.
Sullivan also mocked Pollitt for stammering at one point, a method he defended (in response to a email from me) on the principle that her stammer indicated a lack of argument. The "debate" can be found at:
http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/w/b/wbur/oneunionstation/2001/10/spc_10 16b.rm
Jacob Segal