Monday, February 12, 2007

Handjob for D'Souzaphone

Ooh, slappy fight!
Why are some conservatives so determined to let liberals off the hook for 9/11? For the past five years, leading pundits on the left have blamed American foreign policy for the blowback of Muslim rage that produced 9/11. In my book The Enemy at Home I turn the tables and say that it is liberal foreign policy and liberal values projected abroad that are largely responsible for this blowback.

In a recent column, Victor Davis Hanson charges that my argument puts me in the category of leftist author Susan Sontag and fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell. Sontag blamed 9/11 on “specific American alliances and actions.” Falwell said 9/11 was God’s punishment for America’s sins. Both seemed to imply that America deserved it.

But this is not what I say at all. My book asks a completely secular question: why did the guys who did 9/11 do it? Five years after this event, it’s not an unreasonable question. To ask it is not to “justify” the attacks any more than to ask whether British appeasement of Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland “justified” that invasion. Explanation is not the same as justification.

"But this is not what I say at all." I remind D'Souza of the title of his book: The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. And what General Handjob said was
But D'Souza's strained effort to fault millions of Americans for 9/11 proves no more convincing than was Susan Sontag's or Jerry Falwell's.

He's just saying your blaming is as stupid as theirs, not that it turns around the same, uh, axis.

(I should add here that it's been a long time since I read the Sontag piece, and I do not recall craziness within it. I'd look it up, but time to go.)

1 comment:

Hattie said...

Sontag said we can mourn but we can't be stupid. Bush does the opposite of what she recommends. He's a dope who doesn't care, as long as he can live in the beautiful White House.
I miss her and Molly.