LOOKING FOR MODERATES IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. If you want to see some rightwingery that's really no stupider than your average rightwingery, but a good deal more dangerous, look here and elsewhere on the Corner for yesterday's giant series of posts slamming the Council on American Islamic Relations. The basic dynamic is something any liberal should be familiar with -- CAIR has some political disagreements with George W. Bush and has expressed them in public statements. For their trouble, they're subjected to a smear campaign casting aspersions on their motives, etc., etc., etc.
At the same time all this attacking is going down, attacker in chief Katherine Jean-Lopez keeps making noises about "moderate Muslims." But wake up -- these are the moderate Muslims. You can agree or disagree with CAIR about the term "Islamic fascists" -- I find it more mind-bogglingly stupid than anti-Islamic -- as much as you like, but at the end of the day this list of chapters is not a series of terror cells plotting attacks against American civilians. They're the moderates. They're the people you want on your side against that group of people who are plotting attacks against Americans.
This other thing where "Muslim moderate" means something like "agrees with the National Review's take on American national security policy" is just to generate a world where you could fit all the world's Muslim moderates into Fuad Ajami's living room and have a nice party. There's no reason to look at the world like that, but doing it seriously does risk transforming a manageable terror problem into an overwhelming one.
--Matthew Yglesias
