DOES DAVID BROOKS ACTUALLY KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IRAQ AND THE REST OF THE ARAB/MUSLIM WORLD?

Brooks talking Wednesday on NPR's All Things Considered about the defeat of Joe Lieberman (audio link):

BROOKS: ...It's the product of a series of long trends. The first is the polarization of the parties, which has made it very hard to be in the center, and the second is the war against Ira--, against Islamic extremism, which has exacerbated a lot of those fissures.

MICHELE NORRIS, Host: Now, I noticed you almost said "war against," "war against Iraq" and you stopped yourself.

BROOKS (nervously): Well, well, uuuh, that is part of the war against Iraq -- Islamic extremism....

(You know, David, it's not a war against Iraq, if by "Iraq" you mean "the government of Iraq," which, officially, we like. But never mind.)

Then there's Brooks on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night:

MARGARET WARNER: Would you put President Bush in the ranks of those who yesterday made political comments?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I actually don't think he did as much. I think the usage of the phrase "Iraqi fascism," which he used...

MARGARET WARNER: Islamic fascism.

DAVID BROOKS: Islamic -- sorry, Islamic fascism....

There's also this:

David Brooks Can't Use the Word "Iraq"

In his column yesterday on the Lamont victory in Connecticut, Times columnist David Brooks took up his new cause -- saving the Democratic Party -- and said that Joe Lieberman, and not the "net roots," has the wisdom to see that "The civilized world faces an arc of Islamic extremism that was not caused by American overreaction, and that will only get stronger if America withdraws."

Withdraws? From what? The word "Iraq" never appears in Brooks's column....

It's true: It doesn't.

That's because, I think, Brooks doesn't know where or what Iraq is. All he knows is that it's some part of the great undifferentiated mass of Islamofascistan.