Catching an Alan Dershowitz line I missed, Matthew Duss examines what the Dersh meant when he attributed Obama's association with Brzezinski to "naivete":
By "naivete," Dershowitz doesn't mean Obama's relative inexperience in foreign affairs, which is precisely what Brzezinski was brought in to meliorate. The "naivete" to which Dershowitz is refers involves Obama's apparent unawareness of the unacceptability of certain foreign policy ideas in American politics, the impermissibility of associating with people who espouse those ideas, and the price exacted if these strictures are ignored. Hillary Clinton learned that lesson after she embraced Suha Arafat in 1999. We'll see how Obama does.
Those foreign policy ideas: That this Israel Lobby which is currently planting stories to attack and embarrass Obama doesn't exist; that all Israeli policies, including the indefensible settlements, must be ceaselessly supported; that the man who, as Matt notes, "[helped] to negotiate the single most significant and long-lasting peace treaty in Israel's history, in which the preeminent Arab state recognized Israel, and removed the threat of a united Arab front against the Jewish state," is to be rendered untouchable for calmly defending and contextualizing a book by two leading international relations scholars.
Strange town.
Further Reading: Here, by the way, is Brzezinski on Walt and Mearsheimer in Foreign Policy. Spot the anti-semitism!
