And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word "naive":
"deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment."
There was plenty of that on display last week in Pittsburgh and in
Washington.
At the annual National Conference of Editorial Writers Convention in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania governor and former general chair of the Democratic
National Committee, Ed Rendell, addressed a group of pundits on the subject,
"Will the Real Democratic Party Please Stand Up?" After running through
standard Democratic boilerplate issues - increase the minimum wage, raise
taxes (except property taxes), spend more on education (as if too much is
not already being spent with little to show for it) and, curiously, "The
Bible has nothing to say about abortion and gay marriage" (but it has plenty
to say about sexual relationships and life's value at all stages). Later,
Rendell invoked biblical mandates to justify his view that God meant
government, not individuals or the church, should help the poor and
"disadvantaged."
Rendell was asked what he would do about Iraq if he were president. He said
he is not running, but if he were and he won, on the day after his
inauguration, "I would go to Iraq and ask to be on TV throughout the Middle
East and I'd say, 'We came here with the best of intentions and wanted to
create freedom and democracy for all and 3,000 Americans have died. It is
clear to me we have become the main problem. I'm going to ask the
international community to develop a peacekeeping force and reduce our
presence. We're going to help you build houses, provide aid and economic
opportunity for your people.'"
That isn't a peace plan; it's a plan for surrender. Like liberal Democrats
in the 1980s, who believed the best way to handle the Soviet Union was to
demonstrate we meant them no harm by unilaterally disarming, Rendell and
many of his fellow Democrats believe there would be no consequences for
America and the world should we fail to support democracy in Iraq for which
millions of Iraqis have voted. Does he seriously believe such a retreat
would not be seen as surrender and weakness, playing into the hands of
jihadists, who would be emboldened to keep on fighting until they dominated
all of Europe and then come after America? This is why liberal Democrats
cannot be trusted to run the foreign policy of the United States.