Tony Judt, whose hefty Post War: A History of Europe Since 1945 beckons ominously from my nightstand, has a very fine question posted in the London Review Of Books.

Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration’s sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?

If your mind turns to questions like this, don’t miss Judt. By the way, he misses them.

It is the liberals, then, who count. They are, as it might be, the canaries in the sulfurous mineshaft of modern democracy. The alacrity with which many of America’s most prominent liberals have censored themselves in the name of the War on Terror, the enthusiasm with which they have invented ideological and moral cover for war and war crimes and proffered that cover to their political enemies: all this is a bad sign. Liberal intellectuals used to be distinguished precisely by their efforts to think for themselves, rather than in the service of others. Intellectuals should not be smugly theorising endless war, much less confidently promoting and excusing it. They should be engaged in disturbing the peace – their own above all.

Bush’s Useful Idiots

[A prize of public recognition to s/he who can identify the originator of the phrase “useful idiots” before reading Judt’s piece.]