On French Public Intellectualism

So, this raises an exceptionally uncomfortable question for some foreign policy commentators.  BHL might look like a horse's ass right now, but six or seven weeks ago, he was playing a very different role.  According to BHL himself multiple press reports, Bernard-Henri Lévy was the interlocutor between Libya's rebels and the rest of the world.  He therefore played a crucial role in getting French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- and therefore, the West more generally -- to intervene in Libya.  This caused some consternation at the time.  It would obviously set off even louder alarm bells now. 

Given this role, Ben Smith tweets a very valid question:  "So if the order of DSK-gate and Libya are reversed... do we go into Libya?"

Would the Libyan action happen in a post-Dominique-Strauss-Kahn world? | Daniel W. Drezner