The Wages of Naivete

In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) Michel-Rolph Trouillot observes: "Naivete is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naivete is always a mistake." (xix)

I wonder which is the NYT: pretending not to know to avoid culpability (a kind of limited liability journalism) or victim of its own want for knowledge.

Which ever the case, NYT op-ed columnist Roger Cohen thinks that Madame Secretary should take Ehud Olmert's advice and show a little "tough-love" for Israel when it undermines any prospect of a peace-process. Why a US SecSt should take advice from a corrupt, and discredited former Likudnik (besides tradition) is beside the point. The fact is that when Olmert pleads:

We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage elsewhere — without this, there will be no peace.

he only demonstrates his own irrelevance- and the NYT commits criminal naivete by suggesting that Hillary would entertain such drivel for even one moment. The NYT should know by now that Hillary demonstrated her "National Security" and "Foreign Policy" credentials when she entered the race for NY Senate the same way virtually all politicians have since Vietnam: by inserting Israel as a counter-metaphor to American weakness and decline (See McAllister, Epic Encounters, "the good fight"). (This is AKA prostrating oneself before AIPAC.) And so Hillary will again seek to demonstrate her - and America's - "credibility" (you know that wonderful thing that brought us Vietnam...) by standing with Netanyahu and "our great Israeli ally" in the Global War on Terrorism.

American Empire is doomed. How many scarce resources will the new adminstration exhaust trying to put humpty-dumpty back together again? Early indications are: way too many.

Naivete is a luxury that we can't afford/ crime we can't excuse at this point.