The Idiocy of Juan Williams

Ideals are important. I want to uphold them. But I wonder if clutching them tightly while people are trying to find a way to kill you is really a wise idea.

Consider Juan Williams yesterday on Fox News Sunday:

WILLIAMS: And don't you think it's possible that you could have a situation that when the Congress starts to look at it, they say here are reasonable rules, we're going to have no bail for these guys, we want somebody to report, you know, to a 9/11-type commission exactly what did these people do, what is the danger they pose. And then you say we're going to set a date for trial. I mean, that moves the thing along. Everybody feels good about it. America is protected.
Why do you snicker? Why?

HUME: I'm not snickering -- everybody feels good about it. Juan, when you're fighting against terrorists who observe no rules of war, who are oblivious to the Geneva Conventions, who go among innocent people for the purpose of murdering as many of them as they can, and the Supreme Court of the United States decides that they're entitled to the same protections as a uniformed army fighting under the banner of a real country, you've got a problem. And ain't everybody going to be happy.

KRISTOL: Juan asked me why I was smiling. I'm smiling because this is going to be a great debate for Republicans in Congress for the next few months.

WILLIAMS: For Republicans.

KRISTOL: Absolutely. I hope, because the Democrats are either going to have to basically acknowledge that the president has been right all along by authorizing what he wanted, and they're going to have to rebuke the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, or the Democrats are going to be in the position of saying that Al Qaida deserves protections like normal prisoners of war or like normal people in the American justice system.

WILLIAMS: I think they'll say we're proud to be Americans because we stand for human rights, human values, even when we are fighting monsters.