Liberals believe they are the smartest people on the planet, but in reality they are often incredibly stupid.  We all know someone like this.  They may be brilliant, academically, but they don’t have a shred of common sense.  People like this can thrive in a protected environment, like a university or a news room, because they are surrounded by people who actually do have street smarts protecting them. But if they ever encounter the real world, the results are often catastrophic.

Alan Colmes asked why Officer Wilson couldn’t have shown more restraint in dealing with Michael Brown.  I can pretty much guarantee that Alan Colmes has never had a personal encounter with a 6’5” 350 angry man determined to kill him. He hasn’t had that experience because there are people, like Officer Wilson, who protect him against this. Most of us are fortunate enough to never have to deal with something like that. Even most police officers usually don’t run into someone who is ready, willing and able to kill them.  Those that do often end up dead. The others shoot the bad guy first.

Even fewer people encounter a real terrorist. Only an incredibly evil person would be willing to plan an attack designed to kill 3,000 innocent people for no good reason. When you capture such a person, it would be incredibly stupid to pretend that they are just like everyone else. These people are not persuaded by moral arguments. They give no consideration to doing the right thing. Yet obviously these people have information about future attacks that is vital to our national security.

This reminds me of the decision by Churchill and FDR to bomb cities in Germany. Prior to the war and even earlier during the war they both said bombing civilians would be unthinkable. So why did they change their mind? The answer is that the most unethical decision they could have made would have been to not do whatever it took to defeat Adolph Hitler.

George W. Bush had a similar moment.  He decided that the most unethical thing he could do would be to allow thousands and potentially millions of people die because we were afraid to treat people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed harshly.

There is a huge backlash to the idiotic decision by Diane Feinstein to release the CIA torture report. No logical person believes her theory that nothing was learned as a result of these interrogations. That is absurd. But in addition, most people aren’t even appalled at how these guys were treated. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way Nancy Pelosi did when she first learned about this.  She asked if we couldn’t do more.  The most unethical way to treat a captured terrorist with firsthand information about an imminent threat to national security would be to stop before you get the results you need.

To put this in perspective, suppose the police capture a guy who they knew had kidnapped a little girl. It was obvious that if they did not find her in the next couple of hours she would have no chance to survive. How much restraint would you want the police to show toward this guy? Would you be willing to just let the little girl die because it was more important to treat the kidnapper with dignity and respect?

How about the Barack Obama approach?  Rather than capture the guy, you send in a drone to bomb the crap out of him killing anyone else in the vicinity.  Then you hold a news conference explaining that you did this because it would be so unfair to ask him tough questions.

Stupid is as stupid does.

TDM