We spent forty years failing in Latin America? Hmmm, I must have missed that stretch of communist republics from Chiapas to Tierra del Fuego. We failed in Vietnam, yes, but we succeeded in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, etc. The cost of victory was so great for the locals that revolution failed to spread beyond Indochina. What a great defeat for the U.S.

This intellectual isn't really all that intellectual.

The only America he understands is the VIP lounge.

Read the review of his book in the LA Times. Three pages on Sharon Stone. Oh yeah, he truly understands the American people! Because he spends so much time with them. Uh huh.

Dear Sir.

In Mr. Broudy's interview with Bernard-Henri Levy, Mr. Levy states that the United States executed 475 prisoners last year. The actual figure for the last year is 59, of the 944 prisoners executed since the moratorium was liftted 1976. Although I am with Mr. Levy in his view that capital punishment is ethically unsound and ineffectual, I am unsure of how Mr. Levy arrived at his figure.

Gregory Owen

Bernard Henri-Levy points to the bankruptcy of leading intellectuals on the left, especially during and right after the 2004 elections. This is a direct result of the left's historical and ongoing support for the Democratic Party. Without a left wing or social democratic mainstream party, opposition to the Republicans for many means doing whatever it takes to defeat a party that promotes war, shreds civil liberties, shills for corporations and supports the death penalty. Unfortunately, the alternative we're given is to vote for a party, the Democrats, that promotes war, shreds civil liberties, shills for corporations and supports the death penalty. This greatly diminishes the ability of leading figures on the left to criticize these destructive policies and undermines any genuine opposition to attacks against working people and oppressed groups.

The lesser evilists in this country use the Supreme Court as the trump card showing why stopping the Republicans by voting for Democrats should be the ultimate priority of progressives. But a look at the sorry opposition of the Democrats to the dangerous nomination of Samuel Alito should convince any objective observer that the Democrats cannot be trusted to defend our rights. It must be remembered that last year, they signed a "compromise" meant to preserve their right to filibuster only extreme judicial nominees. Apparently, they don't think that Alito, who decided that wives need the permission of their husbands to seek an abortion and who consistently has advocated for unbridled executive power at a time when rampant spying by the Bush administration has come to light, is extreme enough. Exactly whom are they waiting for Bush to nominate, Joseph Goebbels?

The likely hood that Canada will stay with Martin is extremely slim. It looks like a Conservative win from where I am sitting. That said I wouldn’t despair since its not a question of Canadians suddenly embracing Conservative values but of disgust towards the Liberal Party who felt entitled to use government funds like their personal piggy bank. The good news is that the Conservative will probably have to form a minority government facing an opposition which is solidly center left. Meaning these guys won’t have chance to pull the same kind of stunts that the Republicans have in the US.

So, the French consider Bernard-Henri Levy to be an intellectual.

Well, they also consider Jerry Lewis to be funny, so we shouldn't be surprised.

BHL used to have a lot of hair flowing out of his unbuttoned shirt. Mmm, looks like the hero is aging.

Anyway, and that’s the serious remark, before being a “philosopher”, he is the very wealthy heir of his father’s fortune. Various recent evaluations range from 120M and 150M Euros and his main occupation is to manage various family holdings such as BPL Finances. So far, so fine. What is unusual is that he has dedicated a part of this fortune to build his public persona and groom his ego. And that and that alone explains why BHL has become a “prominent” voice among French “intellectuals” since the late seventies. BHL has sold himself as a major intellectual without having ever produced any substantial work in the area of philosophy.

He is largely considered as a mere fraud in France, and always was considered as such by people like Pierre Vidal-Naquet or Gilles Deleuze. With quite a bit of cruelty, Pierre Bourdieu used to call him a “fast-thinker”, a McDonald of philosophy. His opinions and works are negligible and don’t deserve Salon’s attention.

There is a lot to say and write about anti-Americanism in France but, don’t worry, not a word worth reading has been or will be written by BHL. Sorry to see Salon loosing its time with this buffoon.

Towards the end of the interview, Bernard-Henry Levy seems to have swapped his moral compass with a bucket-load of guilibility when he professes a preference for the idealism of the neocons to isolationism of those like Buchanan. However odious one considers Buchanan's views to be, and however idealistic the neocons beliefs in democracy are, a quick look at Iraq with its daily slayings should put the consequences of later into perspective. Buchanan is in a minority with hardly any influence, whereas the neocons belong to a minority with real influence over the foreign policy of the world's most powerful country. Levy feels that this "naive" idealism, with its purity of motives, can somehow mitigate the predictably horrific outcomes. Outcomes from ends being pushed through by any means, no matter how unethical. Idealism is morally right but practically wrong.

What is even worse about Levy's treatment of the neocons is his indirect attenuation of their culpability, his implications of idealism, naiveness, and high-minded beliefs in democracy, when none of these descriptions have any truth in them. What! Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, and the whole gang from the Iran Contra scandal idealistic and naive? What planet does BHL belong to? As for the rest of them, including Kristol, one need only to refer to the PNAC.