Who Can Really Blame Iran for Wanting the Bomb?

When the Manhattan Project delivered an atomic monopoly to the United States, some of the politicians figured that enough secrecy could preserve the status quo. Most of the scientific community figured that once the theory was known, it was only a matter of time before other countries worked out the details. That's the way it turned out.

Some of us old timers can remember when people talked about nuclear disarmament. That's pretty much gone with the wind. For three decades the concept has been non-proliferation. It started with a pragmatic approach to the existing nuclear powers, but it was never sustainable in the long run.

We, the nuclear powers, decided that the only legitimate nuclear powers would be those who already had bombs in 1972. Everyone else was to play nicely and, in exchange for the peaceful benefits of atomic energy, would forego weapons.

The problem is that the peaceful benefits of atomic energy are a lot less promising than they were fifty years ago. The happy visions of electricity "too cheap to meter" never worked out. There are still good things being done, but they aren't the miracles we'd hoped for.

On the other hand, the advantages of having atomic bombs have become clearer. For India and Pakistan, it's been a draw, but for Israel, their unacknowledged possesion of nuclear weapons has meant that no Arab state is going to seriously threaten their existence.

And nobody has failed to notice that North Korea, a bunch of dangerous loonies if ever there were, has not been invaded and the United States is still proposing incentives. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein is on trial. North Korea really has a bomb. Saddam only wanted one. The message is clear. Get one and you're safe.

Although it's obvious that we don't really want Iran to have a bomb, the question must be asked, is this an intolerable outcome? In sixty years, nobody has exploded a nuclear device in anger. That's because, as far as we know, only states have them and for a state, with a capital city and an exposed population, a nuclear weapon is useless for offense. Whoever uses one first will probably be incinerated, unless they're the United States, which isn't much of a prospect.

The problem is non-state entities who could use bombs for terror. Is it any less tolerable for Iran to have a bomb than North Korea or Pakistan? Probably not. The NPT may have served its purpose and passed its useful life expectancy.

Iraq the Worst Decision? Not even close.

By reading a very right-wing blog, I learned that someone thinks Iraq is the worst foreign policy decision the United States has ever made. The blog said, no way, the worst decision was when Harry Truman didn't just nuke the Soviets over the Berlin Blockade. I partly agree. It wasn't the worst decision, although the alternative presented is pretty bizarre.

A much more rational comparison would be against the decision to fight in Viet Nam. The jury is still out, since we aren't out of Iraq yet, but Viet Nam looks worse to this point.

For instance, the cost in cash may be comparable, but only before you consider inflation or the growth of the U.S. economy in the past 40 years. Viet Nam had an major impact on the overall economy. Iraq, at around a half percent of GDP, is economically inconsequential.

In terms of lives lost, either ours or theirs, the comparison is again one-sided. We've lost a couple thousand soldiers in Iraq and the worst case estimates for Iraqi deaths don't go much over 100,000 even with some dubious extrapolations. American deaths in Viet Nam came to more than 57,000 in addition to a couple million Vietnamese.

Socially, Iraq's impact on the United States has been minor. Viet Nam split America into two camps, with very little middle ground. Iraq has motivated relatively few people to demonstrate and, without a draft, almost no one to emigrate. Supporters increasingly have reservations and opponents can't forget that before we came in, Saddam Hussein ruled Baghdad. We're talking shades of gray rather than black and white.

On balance, it looks like Viet Nam was worse hands down. However, we aren't out yet and that leaves an unresolved danger. In the end, the rationale for fighting communism in Viet Nam didn't prove true. Communism did not spread, except in the chaos generated by the war itself and then only temporarily. The domino theory was just wrong.

We don't yet know where the invasion of Iraq will take us. We may have created a Sunni/Shiite flashpoint that will turn into bloody civil war. We may have empowered the Kurds sufficiently that the Turks will feel threatened and move to suppress them. We may have presented Al-Qaeda with a better opportunities for motivating and recruiting terrorists than what we shut down in Afghanistan.

We don't know yet. In a couple years, we may. Stay tuned.

A Litmus Test for the Supreme Court is Nothing New

When considering candidates for the Supreme Court in 2005, the overriding issue that seems to lurk just beneath the surface, beneath only because it is unconstitutional to bring it into the open, is whether this individual would ever vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. The principle of separation of powers between the three branches means that the legislative branch can't pick justices based on a promise to rule a certain way in a future case. Before Harriet Miers' nomination was withdrawn, we were hearing lots of coded suggestions that she would vote to overturn, but never anything explicit from her.

A hundred and fifty years ago, the overriding question was slavery, and again the Supreme Court was at the center of the controversy. The South was well represented on the court at that time and that fact played heavily in the courts decision in the Dred Scott decision, in which the pro-slavery decision of the court reflected the geographical distribution of the justices.

The issues covered by the Dred Scott decision were ultimately resolved by the Civil War and the 13th and 14th amendments. The power of the South over the Supreme Court was broken by the Civil War and never fully restored.

The Civil War did settle the question of slavery. No such apocalyptic event is likely to settle the question of abortion, so the problem must be viewed with due concern for the prospect of a 4-3 vote to overturn, followed a few years and a new administration later, by a 4-3 vote to restore it. I'm sure this prospect worries the justices as well, and a number of very conservative people have expressed reservations about overturning Roe, regardless of the original merits.

Although there are many people who will consider abortion to be the crucial issue, an even more important question may be the role of the court in a stable framework of precedent.

What Would Justice Thomas Do?

I don't expect to see a lot of WWJTD buttons sprouting up. We pretty much know what Clarence Thomas will do. He'll say very little and vote the same as Antonin Scalia. The more interesting question might be, "What would Justice Thomas have done?"

In particular, let's suppose that rather than succeeding Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, that Clarence Thomas had been sitting on the court when it heard Marshall's arguments in Brown v. Board of Education. When the Supreme Court ruled against the principle of segregation disguised as "separate but equal" in 1954, it overturned "settled law" as established by Plessy v. Ferguson. It suggested that regulations which, on their face, were neutral with regard to opportunities for black people, might in reality be designed to keep them down.

Where would Justice Thomas have stood on that issue? It's an interesting question.

Do we really expect the Supreme Court not to make law?

We'll never know if Harriet Miers would have passed the test, but John Roberts evidently did and we can expect the next Bush nominee for the Supreme Court to pass it as well. What test is that? Adherence to "strict construction" of the Constitution.

Or in ordinary words, the view that courts should not "make law." But, of course, if the court hadn't made law in its early years, nobody would be so concerned about who would serve on it today. When John Marshall wrote Madison v. Marbury in 1803, he asserted the right of the Supreme Court to determine constitutionality of federal legislation. This right does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. Logically, it might have been one of the powers of the President, but Marshall succeeded in establishing the Supreme Court's preeminence in such decisions and it has become a settled fact.

This is not to suggest that a more conservative approach to the role of the Supreme Court is not possible. Justices may be slower to overturn precedent and more reluctant to second guess legislation. But to suppose that they will ever stop "making law" is to misread the historic role of the court.