Rank-Breakers <i>The Anatomy of an Industry</i>

Abstract

George W. Bush has done a favor for the intellectuals who hate him so much: he has made them celebrities. His War on Terror has triggered an impas sioned debate on the left over the direction of American foreign policy. On one side are interventionists such as Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens who claim it is essential to confront Islamofascism and the left's appeasement of soft jihad, especially in Europe?what Berman in an upcoming book calls The Flight of the Intellectuals. On the other side are liberal intellectuals such as Tony Judt and Ian Buruma, who want to unmask liberal hawks as neoconservatives apr?s la lettre who, in Judt's phrase, provide an ethical fig leaf for the Bush administration's brutish foreign policies. The argument has proceeded with rancor for well over six years, with each participant fine-tuning his positions and always keeping an eye out to see if any of the others have retreated from theirs. Has Hitchens now finally joined up with the neocons once and for all? Has Judt's ambivalence about Israel taken control of his argumentation? In arguing for rapprochement with Europe's restive Mus lims, is Buruma recapitulating the appeasement of intellectuals in the 1930s? For all the heat it has generated, for all the moments of good theater it has provided, the debate over the War on Terror has also called into question the role of public intellectuals today. In a prior time, these intellectuals could be