The Deplorable Extremism of the ‘Moderates’

The New York Times applies the soothing “moderate” label to those aligned with a brutal status quo at home and abroad, writes Norman Solomon. What’s so moderate about genocide?

U.S. President Joe Biden giving a foreign policy address on the work of his administration in January 2025. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)

By Norman Solomon

Common Dreams

We’ve been hearing a lot of panicky warnings lately after Democratic primary voters chose socialists and other leftists instead of “moderates” in several major elections. The alarm bells got louder this month after Michigan’s progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens — who was, The New York Times reported, “the moderate establishment-backed candidate.”

The soothing “moderate” label routinely goes to candidates like Stevens who’ve supported continual arming of Israel. She “benefited from about $62 million in advertising spending from half a dozen outside groups,” the Times noted. “Over half of that sum came from the super PAC arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the country’s most influential pro-Israel group.”

What’s so “moderate” about supporting genocide?

Official headshot of Stevens, 2018. (Phi Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / United States Congress)

Politicians are also routinely dubbed “moderate” when they’re running interference for extreme income inequality and deadly healthcare inequities — helping to block popular policy options like tax hikes on the rich and Medicare for All, which is supported by three-quarters of Democrats.

The Democratic base is fed up with a system that gives inordinate power to the wealthy and to large corporations.

In the real world, the so-called “moderates” are aligned with a status quo that continues to inflict widespread suffering and preventable death at home and abroad.

To hear timeworn party strategists like James Carville and Paul Begala tell it, leftwing candidates are duping the Democratic electorate. As this month began, Carville threatened to leave the party. Begala made headlines by declaring, “I don’t like the socialists. I can’t stand them.”

But last month, a CNN poll found that “about a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults identify as democratic socialists.” At a time when defeating the fascistic Republican Party is imperative, any strategist’s prescription that would denigrate or seek to exclude them amounts to political malpractice.

Treating so many Democratic voters like interlopers to be scolded might play well with corporate donors. But it’s a feeble swim against the political current.

Polling shows that the younger Democratic voters are, the more favorable they’re apt to be toward socialism. “Younger adults are more likely to be in groups on the left, while older adults tend to cluster in more conservative groups,” the Pew Research Center noted.

Drawing on the results of its new public opinion survey, Global Strategy Group just reported that “socialist Democrats skew younger, with 57 percent of them being between the ages of 18 and 44.” Another poll, released a month ago by Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research, found that two-thirds of young people “said that their political views have changed in some way in recent years” — and “youth whose views did shift were almost twice as likely to become more liberal/progressive instead of more conservative.”

As socialists and others on the left prevail in many high-profile races, the refrains of condemnation coming from some of the Democratic Party establishment are potshots in a losing battle. By definition, young voters are the future of the party. Its prospects for winning elections are diminished to the extent that younger voters are made to feel unwelcome, or even vilified.

To the ears of many young Democratic voters, derision about how they cast their ballots is coming from out-of-touch party elders who treat crucial problems as abstractions or matters worthy only of lip service. Millions of Americans in early adulthood are facing financial stress with bleak outlooks for jobs and careers. College tuitions are often prohibitive, and college debt can be debilitating. Rents and mortgages are high. Everyday expenses are worse than a challenge. The climate crisis is real.

Such realities cast a shadow over the future. The last thing those voters want is arrogant leadership that refuses to grasp the urgency of this political moment.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.

Pentagon Eyeing Tactical Nuclear Weapons Use

The strategy is being overseen by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, who has long called for the U.S. to prepare to fight a “limited nuclear war,” reports Dave DeCamp. 

Nuclear weapon test Dakota, June 26, 1956. (U.S. Dept. of Energy /Wikimedia Commons)

By Dave DeCamp

Antiwar.com

The Pentagon is reportedly drafting a new nuclear strategy that’s expected to emphasize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to give the president more “options” in a potential nuclear conflict.

The strategy, first reported by NBC News, is being drafted by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, who has for more than a decade called for the U.S. to develop additional capabilities to fight a “limited nuclear war.”

The idea would be to shift the U.S. nuclear strategy away from the focus on using strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out an adversary’s nuclear capabilities and focus more on the possibility of using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in a “regional” conflict.

“If you actually want extended deterrence to be credible, you have to provide the nation’s political leadership with nuclear capabilities that common sense indicates you could actually use,” a source told NBC. “Otherwise you’re reducing our leadership’s options to extreme choices that the adversary won’t find credible.”

While the potential strategy would be carried out in the name of deterrence and preventing war, arms control advocates have strongly warned against the idea of developing more tactical nuclear weapons to prepare for a potential limited nuclear conflict over concerns that it would make nuclear war much more likely and that any nuclear exchange would likely lead to a global catastrophe.

“Without a firm rejection of the option to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, by building and fielding more tactical nuclear weapons the administration is signaling its intention to use them against enemy forces and industrial infrastructure in a conflict,” the Arms Control Association said in response to the NBC report.

The ACA said that it “strongly opposes the administration’s decision to build more tactical nuclear weapons to supplement the options that exist” and pointed to the fact that the U.S. already has at least two types of tactical nuclear weapons, including B61-12 gravity bombs, which are deployed in Europe, and the W76-2 low-yield warhead for the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile.

The ACA said the U.S. Navy is also “acquiring a new nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) that may be available at the end of the decade for possible use in conflict with China.”

Breaking Defense reported that Colby announced on Aug. 5 that the Pentagon was reviewing the U.S. nuclear posture and repeatedly emphasized the term “options” in a speech he delivered that has not been made public.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg swears in Colby, right, as under secretary of defense for policy, with an oath ceremony at the Pentagon on April 9, 2025. (DoD photo / U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jack Sanders / Public Domain)

Colby has been one of the leading voices in Washington’s policy circles advocating for the U.S. to prepare for limited nuclear war. In a 2015 paper for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) titled “A Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2030,” Colby said the U.S. “should make a special effort to develop the platforms and weapons, doctrine, planning capacity, and other capabilities needed to fight a limited nuclear war more effectively than plausible adversaries.”

He said that the ideal U.S. nuclear force is: 

“One that is not only highly survivable and able to issue a devastating blow against any adversary under any scenario but that is also capable of conducting effective limited nuclear operations in a controlled fashion while maintaining the ability to escalate to full-scale war if necessary.”

Colby made a similar argument in a 2018 piece written in Foreign Affairs titled “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War,” published just a few months after he left the first Trump administration, where he led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

“Washington’s task is clear. It must demonstrate to Moscow and Beijing that any attempt to use force against US friends and allies would likely fail and would certainly result in costs and risks well out of proportion to whatever they might gain,” Colby wrote. “This requires conventional military power, but it also means having the right strategy and weapons to fight a limited nuclear war and come out on top.”

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Four Pillars of Modern Western Thought, and the Islamic Response

Author: Salim Mohamed Badat

Introduction

Civilisations are shaped less by armies and economies than by the ideas that govern how truth, morality, and meaning are understood.

Modern Western society, despite its technological power, rests on philosophical foundations that have quietly displaced revelation, fragmented ethics, and destabilised purpose.

The Quran warns that societal corruption begins internally: “Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned” (Quran 30:41).

This article examines four dominant philosophical currents shaping contemporary Western thought, their influence on modern society, and the Islamic response grounded in the Quran.

Reason Without Revelation: Enlightenment Rationalism and Empiricism

The European Enlightenment arose as a reaction against ecclesiastical abuse, but in rejecting corruption it also displaced revelation itself. Human reason and sensory experience were elevated as supreme authorities, while metaphysics and divine guidance were marginalised.

Modern Western society inherited this framework, producing scientific advancement alongside moral disorientation and intellectual arrogance.

Islam does not oppose reason or observation; it disciplines them. The Quran criticizes not thinking, but misdirected intellect: “They have hearts with which they do not understand” (Quran 7:179).

Reason in Islam is a tool, not an authority. True knowledge produces humility and God-consciousness: “Only those who have knowledge truly fear Allah” (Quran 35:28). When reason is severed from revelation, it loses its moral compass.

Utility Over Justice: Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism reduces morality to outcomes, measuring good and evil by benefit and harm to the majority. This logic dominates modern governance, economics, and warfare, where efficiency often overrides justice and human dignity.

Islam categorically rejects this calculus. No collective benefit justifies injustice. Allah declares the sanctity of life absolute: “Whoever kills a soul, it is as if he had slain all mankind” (Quran 5:32). Justice is obligatory even when costly: “Stand firmly for justice, witnesses for Allah, even against yourselves” (Quran 4:135).

The Prophet (saw) emphasised moral intention over outcomes: “Actions are judged by intentions” (Bukhari, Muslim).

Islamic ethics are principled, not pragmatic. Obedience to Allah, not numerical success, defines moral success.

Meaning Without God: Existentialism

Existentialism emerged from the collapse of religious authority in Europe, declaring that life has no inherent meaning and that individuals must invent their own purpose.

This philosophy underlies modern radical individualism, identity self-creation, and moral subjectivity, yet it has produced widespread anxiety and nihilism.

The Quran diagnoses this emptiness clearly: “Whoever turns away from My remembrance will have a constricted life” (Quran 20:124). Islam affirms that meaning precedes existence. Purpose is not created by the self but bestowed by the Creator: “I did not create jinn and mankind except to worship Me” (Quran 51:56). Islam replaces existential despair with purpose, accountability, and hope.

Truth as Power: Postmodernism and Critical Theory

Postmodernism rejects objective truth, reducing knowledge to power relations, language, and social constructs. This worldview dominates contemporary Western academia and activism, producing moral relativism, identity fragmentation, and endless deconstruction without reconstruction.

Islam recognises injustice and power abuse, but refuses to dissolve truth into power. The Quran asks decisively: “What is there after truth except misguidance?” (Quran 10:32). Revelation stands above manipulation: “Do not mix the truth with falsehood while you know” (Qur’an 2:42).

The Prophet ( saw) affirmed the clarity of Islam’s moral path: “I have left you upon clear proof; its night is like its day” (Ibn Majah). Islam allows critique, but anchors it in objective truth and divine accountability.

Conclusion: The Tawhdic Worldview

Islam does not offer a competing philosophy among many. It offers a complete worldview rooted in tawhid, the unity of truth, knowledge, ethics, and purpose under Allah’s authority. Revelation stands above reason without negating it. Ethics are grounded in divine command, not consensus. Meaning is discovered through servitude, not manufactured by the self.

Allah declares the completeness of this framework: “This day I have perfected for you your religion” (Quran 5:3).

Muslims do not need Enlightenment rationalism to think, utilitarianism to govern, existentialism to find meaning, or postmodernism to critique power.

Tawhid itself is an epistemological foundation. It liberates the mind from false absolutes and reorients human thought toward its true purpose: knowing Allah, establishing justice, and walking the straight path.

Salim Mohamed Badat

Writer exploring the intersection of faith , politics and justice

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Landlord Diplomacy

You read here and there that Kushner and Witkoff’s undertakings with Moscow and Tehran reflect a diplomatic “style.” On we go to the normalization of stupidity and hubris as merely a new form of statecraft.

Jared Kushner, investor and founder of Affinity Partners on left with the U.S. president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff on right in foreground, in Moscow in December 2025. In background is Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. (Kremlin)

By Patrick Lawrence

Special to Consortium News

Ours is an age of “normalization” — the gradual if not subtle acceptance as normal of realities that are objectionably, often criminally, very often stupidly abnormal. Normalization, let’s mention right away, is an essential trick of the powerful in a world as aberrant and self-destructive as ours. 

This process of normalization is in the most obvious cases impossible to miss.

It took official power and the media serving power… what?… a year or so to normalize the genocide in Gaza. Zionist terror is now normalized. U.S. complicity in this daily terror is now normalized; the criminal regime in Tel Aviv is normalized.

Patently disturbed and incompetent, Donald J. Trump is now normalized as president, dwelling in the same house as Jefferson, Lincoln, F.D.R., Kennedy.   

In his Substack newsletter the other day, Simplicius put this tendency down to “normalcy bias,” meaning the prevalent acceptance of what is, simply because it is. In history, this is a common feature of late-phase empires. Under the headline, “Encore at the Cirque de Hormuz—the Greatest Show on Earth,” this:

“American society lives in a state of Normalcy Bias, as spray-tanned politicians bleat about some kind of ‘Golden Age,’ while virtually everything associated with the American empire slowly goes to hell in a hand basket.” 

P.D.G., I would say. Maybe even P.F.G.

Then there are the cases of normalization that are not so commonly remarked upon. And here I turn to the Trump regime’s way at diplomacy and statecraft. 

You never read in the corporate press about how far beyond accepted practice the Trumpster’s emissaries operate, or how ruinous are their ideological compulsions, or of their divided loyalties, or how incapable they are of carrying out their duties or altogether how destructively ignorant of the world they are: No, all this has been normalized.   

There is the case of Charles Kushner, Trump’s ambassador to Paris. Charles Kushner is a convicted felon — tax evasion, witness tampering, illegal political contributions — with a prison term on his record. Charles Kushner is a fanatical Zionist who, earlier this year, refused to oblige the French Foreign Ministry when summoned to answer for his anti–Semitism-everywhere provocations, which prompted the ministry to note his “incomprehension” and ban him, briefly, from contact with French officials. 

Charles Kushner, second from right, with President Donald Trump at right, at the White House in June 2025, with family members.  Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on left. (The White House /Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

France, Belgium, Poland, Italy: Trump’s appointees make messes all over Europe, typically by intervening in the host country’s domestic affairs, which even a first-year student in international relations knows is a diplomatic not-done. They all share various attributes: They are all Zionists, they have no idea what they are doing as ambassadors and, acting instead as imperial consuls, they have no readily evident interest in any kind of workable, constructive U.S. foreign policy.

This brings me to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoys at large. These are the truly consequential cases of normalized incompetence. They are, like all the others, Zionists ever attentive to the interests of the Jewish state. And like the others, they also display no grasp of what they are doing or, indeed, anything that would pass as a coherent U.S. policy. None of this is ever noted in corporate media: This is how the abnormal is normalized.  

Together, Kushner and Witkoff have been running Trump’s diplomatic relations with Iran and Russia. And they know nothing about Iran, nothing about West Asia other than what the Zionist ideology to which they adhere tells them to know, nothing about either Russia or Ukraine and nothing about Europe altogether. They are ignorant, certainly, of the history of all these nations and regions. 

Normalizing Incompetence

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Witkoff meeting at the Kremlin on Aug. 6, 2025. Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, in background. (Kremlin.ru/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)

The working assumption shared by Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and the man who appointed them — and this is the salient point — is that there is no need to know anything about the things just mentioned. These three, along with Charles Kushner, Jared K.’s father, are New York landlords. This is on occasion mentioned in the media, but never as more than a passing curiosity of no great import. 

It would be hard to overstate the gravity of this normalization of incompetence.

You may assume you know little or nothing of the practices of New York property people, but if you have followed the progress of Witkoff and Kushner the younger — is “progress” my word? — you know more than you think. In the world of real-estate “deals” it is of no importance whatsoever what those on the other side of the mahogany table think, or to what they aspire, or what their interests might be.  Prevailing in one’s own interest is all that matters.

You read here and there that Kushner and Witkoff’s undertakings with Moscow and Tehran reflect a diplomatic “style.” On we go to the normalization of stupidity and hubris as merely a new way at statecraft. To understand the perspectives of others is elemental to sound diplomacy. This thought appears never to enter the minds of the people I name here. “Stupid” is not too strong a term for all of them.   

In the Russian case, readers may recall the 28–point plan Kushner and Witkoff negotiated with the Russians last November in the cause of a settlement of the Ukraine crisis. As I wrote at the time, I found that document remarkable for the extent to which it acknowledged Moscow’s legitimate diplomatic and security interests. 

But as things turned out this was only because neither Witkoff nor Kushner understood anything about the East–West security relationship, and the 28–point plan, after the Europeans disemboweled it, was soon a dead letter.

You read now that Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov won’t even speak to these two, Russia’s president and his FM seeing no further point in doing so. Apart from what may be going on in back channels, at the moment there are no diplomatic contacts at all between Moscow and Washington. Good work, Special Envoy Kushner and Special Envoy Witkoff. 

It is the same with the Iranians. Witkoff and Kushner infamously betrayed Tehran last year and earlier this, as it became evident they were working as much or more in Israel’s behalf as the United States’.

More than once negotiations turned out to be cover for imminent attacks. This may be an excellent tactic if you want to trick a competitor in the New York property market in the cause of ruining him or her, but, once again, Iranian diplomats, on down from Abbas Araghchi, Tehran’s highly professional FM, reportedly don’t want even to be in the same room with these two.

This is not diplomatic style. There is no mastery here — only, to take the French term, incomprehension. And it is the collapse of American diplomacy in the hands of these two, as much as any other hell-in-a-handbasket failure, that accounts for the prevalent peril with which humanity must live. 

This is how Kushner and Witkoff are best understood. On they will go. Their ignorance, incompetence, corruptions, divided loyalties, and serial perfidies have been normalized; let us not miss that this is a betrayal of us all.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being censored. 

America: Superpower of the Depleted Arsenal

 The world’s richest and so-called “most powerful” military power is running out of the missiles it would need to fight the wars it claims it is ready for.

Salman Rafi Sheikh

A Superpower Living Off Its Reserves

The United States spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined, yet for months the story of its thinning stockpiles has been fought over in the shadows of leaked documents and think-tank estimates rather than acknowledged from the podium. A CSIS analysis found that during the 39-day US-Israeli air campaign against Iran, the Pentagon burned through roughly US$24 billion in major munitions in just seven weeks, expending nearly half its Precision Strike Missile inventory and half its stock of THAAD interceptors. By mid-summer, CNN reported that Patriot interceptor stockpiles — the backbone of American and allied missile defense — had fallen by two-thirds, and ABC News quoted a US official calling both Patriot and THAAD inventories “extremely low.”

Allied confidence is not built on American press statements; it is built on watching what Washington actually does when a partner asks for help and the cupboard turns out to be barer than advertised

The Trump administration’s response to this reporting has been furious denial. The president has dismissed the coverage as “fake news,” insisted the country has “massive amounts of munitions,” and ordered investigations to hunt down the officials suspected of leaking readiness data, calling their disclosures “treasonous”.

But rhetoric is cheap, and policy is not. In July, meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was asked directly whether the United States would send Ukraine more Patriot interceptors. His answer undercut weeks of public reassurance in a single sentence: “We have Patriots, but we don’t have that many. We need them for ourselves too,” he said, according to The Hill. Instead of missiles, Trump offered Kyiv a license to manufacture its own.

That single exchange is worth more than any leaked memo. Governments can spin a story; they cannot as easily spin a decision made in real time, in front of cameras, to an ally. If the arsenal really were as deep as the administration claims, there was no reason to withhold interceptors from a partner serving a Western agenda. The refusal is the confession the denials were designed to prevent.

Two Clocks, Running Toward the Same Hour

The reason this matters beyond Ukraine is timing. CSIS estimates that restoring pre-war levels of the four most critical munitions will take at least two years, and for some systems, more than three. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly conceded that replenishment will take “months and years… depending on the weapon system.” That is the first clock: how long it takes Washington to refill its magazines.

The second clock belongs to Beijing, and nobody in Washington controls it. China’s own planning window for a potential move on Taiwan is the subject of persistent, if imprecise, debate inside the Pentagon and Congress, but there is little dispute that it exists, and that Chinese planners study American vulnerabilities as carefully as American analysts study Chinese ones. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, CSIS’s Seth Jones warned that US bases across the Pacific — Japan, Guam, South Korea — are exposed to a Chinese missile and drone arsenal considerably larger and more sophisticated than Iran’s, and that the same interceptors now running low in the Middle East are the ones meant to defend them.

The danger is not that either clock alone is disqualifying. It is what happens if they converge — if the American rebuild window overlaps with a Chinese assessment that Washington’s magazines, and its political attention, are stretched thinnest. Deterrence has always rested as much on an adversary’s calculation of timing as on any static count of interceptors. A depleted stockpile that will be refilled in six months is a manageable embarrassment. A depleted stockpile that will refill in three years, sitting exposed for the entirety of a period when Beijing’s own capabilities are still expanding, is a strategic invitation.

This is not an abstraction for Washington’s Pacific allies. South Korea’s own strike doctrine leans on American-supplied precision munitions to hold North Korean artillery and missile sites at risk near the DMZ, and Taipei’s confidence in a US backstop rest on the assumption that Washington’s magazines will not already be empty when the moment comes. Neither government has the luxury of waiting two or three years to find out whether that assumption holds. Rebuilding the arsenal is also not simply a matter of writing a bigger check. Key interceptor components come from a handful of specialized production lines, and the seeker and propulsion systems that go into a single Patriot missile can take upward of two years to manufacture and integrate even once a contract is signed. Congress can accelerate funding, but it cannot compress physics or retool a factory floor overnight, which is exactly why the rebuild clock CSIS describes is measured in years rather than months, no matter how much political urgency now surrounds it.

The Cost of Managing the Story Instead of the Shortfall

This is where the administration’s instinct to suppress the story, rather than address the underlying math, becomes its own liability. Deterrence depends on adversaries and allies alike being able to calculate risk with some confidence. When a government responds to inventory concerns with subpoenas and treason threats instead of a credible accounting, it does not remove the uncertainty, it just relocates it. Beijing does not need an American leak to know how many Patriot interceptors were fired over Israel and the Gulf this spring; it has its own intelligence services for that. What Washington’s reaction actually broadcasts is that the political system is more comfortable managing a narrative than confronting a production problem.

There is also a quieter cost closer to home. Seoul and Tokyo do not need CSIS’s spreadsheets to notice that the same interceptor pool now thin in the Middle East is the one Washington has promised to draw on in a Korean or Taiwanese contingency, or that the administration’s public denials sit awkwardly next to its private decision to withhold interceptors from Ukraine. Allied confidence is not built on American press statements; it is built on watching what Washington actually does when a partner asks for help and the cupboard turns out to be barer than advertised.

None of this means the United States is defenseless, or that China’s own arsenal and industrial base are absolutely free of comparable strains. But great-power competition is rarely decided by who has the largest inventory on the first day of a crisis. It is decided by who can sustain production, credibility, and alliance confidence through the years it takes to refill what a lesser war has already spent. The Iran campaign was the smaller test. Washington’s answer to it — deny in public, ration in private — suggests it has not yet reckoned with what a larger one would demand, and adversaries watching the gap between the president’s words and his decisions have every reason to start their own clocks now.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs