Those foreign "moderates"

One of the repeating left/liberal ideas in foreign policy is that a leader of an enemy is actually a "moderate" and we should not push him too hard because his country would then fall to the more extreme contingent. We heard this about the USSR under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev. We have heard this occasionally about the leadership of Iran, although not about Iran's current president who does not even pretend to pose as a moderate. A terrorist like Arafat and his successor, Abbas, have both succeeded in convincing liberals that they are "moderates." This left/liberal idea is not new. In 1933, the New York Times was playing Hitler as a moderate who might lose control to the extremists: A July 23, 1933 article by Anne O'Hare McCormick was entitled "HITLER THREATENED BY EXTREME NAZIS; OUTBREAKS FEARED" [caps in original]. The NY Times to the contrary notwithstanding, history shows that Hitler was not threatened by extreme Nazis. Rather, Hitler was an extreme Nazi.