[Fwd: Re: Susan Sontag and the Rape of American Thinking.]

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Jones wrote:
 Look at the way Cockburn
> twists like a weathervane from left to right and back; you can do nothing
> with such people; they are completely hopeless, but the noise they make
> obscures the things that are truly important. If you lump Hitchens and
> Cockburn together, no-one is really surprised; it's just another dreary
> definitional turf war. No-one is saved. Nothing is changed. They are all
> simmering in the same broth. Jared has the great merit of fighting for a
> cause which matters, of identifying wholeheartedly with it, warts and all.
> That's why they all unite in hating him (while protesting their anti-nato
> credentials):

Actually, Alex has used Jared's material in counterpunch, and so far as
i know has never said anything bad about him.   You are so intent on
finding enemies you don't even recognize that Alex is on your side!

Katha

ps.   "rattling the china in M-Fem"?  Pretty sexist and patronizing. And
your style of argument -- that opposing the Russian INVASION (not
("involvement") in Afghanistan means supporting the Taliban -- is  quite
irrational. If there had been no Russian invasion and occupation, there
would have been no mass flight of refugees, no CIA-funded Mujaheddin,
no  war, no Taliban. the Taliban is the end product of a twenty-year
story --not some ancient pre-existing feature of Afghan society that the
Russians came in to oppose. I think it would be pretty hard to find a
Russian who thinks it was a great idea to take over Afghanistan and get
involved in a war against the civilian populace--a war which destroyed
Afghanistan and played a part in bringing down the Soviet Union too!
Only on the US  left does one find such simplistic formulations,
collapsing decades of history and presenting as alternatives things that
actually are causally related.
  Since we are talking about Afghanistan, and this is supposed to be a
feminist list, I'd like to suggest that people visit the website of the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan at www.rawa.com. I
wrote about them a few weeks ago in my column -- they are based in
Pakistan and oppose all fundamentalist warlords, and the Taliban. They
run  secret schools for girls in Afghanistan, do health work and
organize against the Taliban.