THE WASHINGTON POST REPORTS on Kurds in Virginia being mistreated by the FBI. (Via Max Sawicky, who has been on this story for a while.)

I understand the importance of cutting off money-flows to terrorists. But the FBI should understand the importance of distinguishing between terrorists and non-terrorists. Leaving aside the obvious downside of injustice, it’s just dumb. Our best line of defense against foreign terror, after all, has traditionally been the immigrant communities in which terrorists try to hide. Alienating them unnecessarily and unfairly is just dumb.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan seems to think that there’s something new about this position on my part, which shows that he’s woefully ignorant. Heck, I was making this point back when Sullivan was still publishing virtual love letters to President Bush, something that I’ve never done. Joining in popular hysteria about Guantanamo, however, is something different. But then, Sullivan’s been all over the place on that topic, too.

I admit that my early fears of police-statism were — as some warned me at the time — overstated. Nonetheless, I think that especially when we’re operating in a domestic rather than a battlefield context, it’s very important to be careful about these things. We can’t afford the frequent idiocies of law enforcement as usual.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James Somers notices something I didn’t:

What struck (and annoyed) me about Sullivan’s swipe at you for your post on Kurds being mistreated by the FBI was Sullivan’s sarcastic remark that you had gone “all librul.” Maybe I’m a little sensitive, having grown up in the Ozarks, but I took the use of the word “librul” as a cheap shot at southerners, as Sullivan’s been on the warpath against red America in general lately. Which is ironic, given that it’s red America that largely supplied the electoral muscle to start the war in Iraq he spent so much of 2002 lusting after. How many of Sullivan’s neighbors in Provincetown supported Operation Iraqi Freedom?

Sullivan doesn’t understand the South, and cheap shots at the South, alas, have been one of his trademarks for a while. I suspect that those, at least, do play well in Provincetown.