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Adults learn that human conflicts are seldom black and white. So the way the international community jumped to punish tiny Honduras for the ouster of its president, without knowing the facts, was foolish.

That some Senate Republicans have been extremist in the other direction borders on galling. Opposing a U.S.-brokered agreement reached a week ago by Hondurans to defuse the crisis, the senators, led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint, have been grandstanding on principles that have little to do with reality, contributing to looming chaos in that Central American country and undermining U.S. policy in the region.

In this, the age of fundamentalist ayatollahs, the knee-jerk cold...