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Never pick a fight you know you cannot win. Or so I was told. Pick an argument if you must, but not a fight. Nothing I have read or heard in recent weeks suggests that fighting Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme makes any sense at all. The very talk of it - macho phrases about "all options open" - suggests an international community so crazed with video game enforcement as to have lost the power of coherent thought.

Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80 million by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its culture is ancient and its political life is, to put it mildly, fluid.

All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only question for western strategists is which of these people they want to help.

Of all the treaties passed in my lifetime the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) always seemed the most implausible. It was an insiders' club that any outsider could defy with a modicum of guile. So it has proved. America, sitting armed to the teeth across Korea's demilitarised zone, has let North Korea become a nuclear power despite a 1994 promise that it would not. America supported Israel in going nuclear. Britain and America did not balk at India doing so, nor Pakistan when it not only built a bomb but deceitfully disseminated its technology in defiance of sanctions. Three flagrant dissenters from the NPT are thus regarded by America as friends.

I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has "no right" to nuclear defence?

None the less this month's reopening of the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant and two others, though purportedly for peaceful uses, was a clear act of defiance by Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) remain unsure whether it implies a secret weapons programme but the evidence for this is far stronger than, for instance, against Saddam Hussein. To have infuriated the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei takes some doing. As Saddam found, deviousness in nuclear matters is bound to arouse suspicion. Either way, the reopening yielded a strong diplomatic coalition of Europe, America, Russia and China in pleading with Ahmadinejad to desist.

On Monday, Washington's kneejerk belligerence put this coalition under immediate strain. In two weeks the IAEA must decide whether to report Iran to the UN security council for possible sanctions. There seems little point in doing this if China and Russia vetoes it or if there is no plan B for what to do if such pressure fails to halt enrichment, which seems certain. A clear sign of western floundering are speeches and editorials concluding that Iran "should not take international concern lightly", the west should "be on its guard" and everyone "should think carefully". It means nobody has a clue.

I cannot see how all this confrontation will stop Iran doing whatever it likes with its nuclear enrichment, which is reportedly years away from producing weapons-grade material. The bombing of carefully dispersed and buried sites might delay deployment. But given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death and destruction caused to Iran's cities would be a gift to anti-western extremists and have every world terrorist reporting for duty.

Nor would the "coward's war" of economic sanctions be any more effective. Refusing to play against Iranian footballers (hated by the clerics), boycotting artists, ostracising academics, embargoing commerce, freezing foreign bank accounts - so-called smart sanctions - are as counterproductive as could be imagined. Such feelgood gestures drive the enemies of an embattled regime into silence, poverty or exile. As Timothy Garton Ash wrote in these pages after a recent visit, western aggression "would drain overnight its still large reservoir of anti-regime, mildly pro-western sentiment".

By all accounts Ahmadinejad is not secure. He is subject to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His foe, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, retains some power. Tehran is not a Saddamist dictatorship or a Taliban autocracy. It is a shambolic oligarchy with bureaucrats and technocrats jostling for power with clerics. Despite a quarter century of effort, the latter have not created a truly fundamentalist islamic state. Iran is a classic candidate for the politics of subtle engagement.

This means strengthening every argument in the hands of those Iranians who do not want nuclear weapons or Israel eliminated, who crave a secular state and good relations with the west. No such argument embraces name-calling, sabre-rattling, sanctions or bombs.

At this very moment, US officials in Baghdad are on their knees begging Iran-backed Shia politicians and militias to help them get out of Iraq. From Basra to the suburbs of Baghdad, Iranian influence is dominant. Iranian posters adorned last month's elections. Whatever Bush and Blair thought they were doing by invading Iraq, they must have known the chief beneficiary from toppling the Sunni ascendancy would be Shia Iran. They cannot now deny the logic of their own policy. Democracy itself is putting half Iraq in thrall to its powerful neighbour.

Iran is the regional superstate. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.

Email to: simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

No member of the Senate who takes seriously the oath they have sworn to defend the Constitution will vote to confirm judicial activist Samuel Alito's nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

To a greater extent than any nominee for the high court in recent memory, and very possibly in the long history of the country, Alito has placed himself clearly and unequivocally at odds with the original intent of the authors of the Constitution and the incontrovertible language of the document.

Alito is consistently on record as favoring steps by the White House to in his words "increase the power of the executive to shape the law." Twenty years ago, as a member of the Reagan administration, Alito was in the forefront of efforts to legitimize executive power grabs designed to allow presidents to take dramatic actions, sometimes in secret, without the advice and consent of Congress.

In a 1986 draft memo that advised Reagan and his aides on how to ensure that their interpretations of official actions trumped those of the legislative branch, Alito acknowledged that his approach would put the White House at odds with the Congress. "The novelty of the procedure and the potential increase of presidential power are two factors that may account for this anticipated reaction," Alito argued. "In addition, and perhaps most important, Congress is likely to resent the fact that the president will get in the last word on questions of interpretation."

The Reagan administration never fully embraced Alito's proposals, but the Bush administration has. And Alito has been cheering on the process of executive power enhancement, telling the Federalist Society in an address five years ago, "The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power the whole thing."

The "whole thing" approach adopted by George Bush and Dick Cheney has placed the current administration on a collision course with the Constitution. And it will be the Supreme Court that must sort through the wreckage.

With the high court widely expected to rule on multiple cases involving questions about presidential war-making, the War Powers Act and domestic manifestations of the Bush administration's so-called "war on terror," the position of every justice on issues of executive authority becomes more significant. And potential changes in the court that might make it more deferent to an executive branch that appears to be bent on eliminating all checks and balances as the confirmation of Alito would surely do are, necessarily, the most consequential of matters.

What is at issue here is not a gray area of legal interpretation.

The authors of the Constitution were absolutely determined to prevent presidents from making war without the consent of Congress and from abusing a state of war to curtail domestic liberties.

James Madison, the essential drafter of the Constitution who would go on to serve as the nation's fourth president, expressed the concern of the founders when he wrote: "Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

"In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Madison added, "War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."

Madison's view was confirmed by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when delegates overwhelmingly approved a motion to deny presidents the power to "make war." That resolution was introduced by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, another key player in the shaping of the document, who explained, "The executive should be able to repel and not to commence war." George Mason, the Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention who is often remembered as "the Father of the Bill of Rights," said at the time, "I am for clogging rather than facilitating war."

John Marshall, a participant in the Virginia ratifying convention that approved the Constitution, would go on to serve as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In that capacity, he would be called upon to interpret the Constitution with regard to the exercise of war powers by the executive. Writing for a unanimous court in 1801, Marshall asserted, "The whole powers of war being, by the Constitution of the United States, vested in Congress, the acts of that body alone can be resorted to as our guides."

Much has been done to undermine the system of checks and balances that the founders wrote into the Constitution to control against executive excess. But, as recently as 2004, the court reaffirmed the basic principle that the president must operate within strict constraints in a time of war. Ruling that the executive branch does not have the power to hold indefinitely a U.S. citizen without basic due process protections, the court rebuked the Bush administration's actions with an opinion that declared, "A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

The author of that statement was Sandra Day O'Connor, the retiring justice whom Alito has been nominated to replace.

Justice O'Connor, who could hardly be referred to as a strict constructionist, was not merely expressing an opinion with her defense of checks and balances on the executive. She was affirming the Constitution, and she was doing so in a manner that respected the intentions of the founders something Samuel Alito's record suggests that he is entirely incapable of doing.

John Nichols is currently the editor of the editorial page of the Capital Times. He is also Washington correspondent for The Nation and has authored a biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History (now available in paperback).

© 2006 The Capital Times

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Will the U.S. economy do as well in 2006 as it did in 2005? That may well depend on whether we can make it through another year without any of the current economy's big imbalances and unsustainable trends coming back to bite us. The median forecast for gross-domestic-product growth in 2006, according to Bloomberg News' latest survey of 71 economists, is 3.4 percent. This is a little less than estimates for 2005, although a significant slowing from last quarter's 4.1 percent annualized rate.

But economists are notorious for not forecasting downturns in the economy. And there are a number of imbalances in the U.S. economy today that, when they provoke the inevitable adjustment, could send the economy spiraling downward.

The most important of these is the housing bubble. House prices have increased by about 55 percent, after adjusting for inflation, over the last eight years. This is an unprecedented departure from their long-term trend -- from the early 1950s to 1996, house prices increased at the same rate as overall inflation. The reason for the vast run-up in house prices is a speculative bubble -- the same kind of frenzy that drove the stock-market bubble in the late 1990s.

When the stock-market bubble began to break in 2000, it caused the recession of 2001. The housing bubble has driven the economic recovery from that recession, and has been responsible for most of the job creation since 2001. The housing market is already cooling, and when the bubble bursts it is very likely to cause a recession.

Our record trade deficit is another unsustainable trend. We are now borrowing about 7 percent of our GDP from abroad. At some point this will have to adjust, and the way this happens -- unless we have a serious recession -- is for the dollar to fall.

Normally this would not be such a bad thing, because it makes our exports cheaper and our imports more expensive, thus reducing the trade deficit. But a fall in the dollar could set off a spike in long-term interest rates here, including mortgage rates, which could burst the housing bubble. It could also cause the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates more than it should, since rising import prices add to inflation. This would also slow the economy.

The economic recovery has also been driven by consumption, financed by enormous levels of borrowing. Last quarter the household-savings rate was negative for the first time ever. This rate of borrowing and consumption is also unsustainable. It is possible that business investment could pick up as consumer spending inevitably slows. But business investment as a share of the economy is still far below its level of 2000.

Unfortunately most Americans even in 2005 did not fare as well as the overall economy. Wages have lagged behind inflation, which means that most people actually lost ground. And this does not include increases in the costs of health insurance and copayments.

That's why most Americans are not as pleased with the economy as Wall Street has been lately. And our 5 percent unemployment rate, which looks relatively good at first glance, is misleading. If we look at the employment rate, instead, we find that it is about 1.7 percentage points lower than it was in 2000. This corresponds to about 3.4 million fewer jobs, because people have quit the labor force. If these missing jobs were counted in the unemployment rate, it would be more than 7 percent.

So a 2006 economy that repeats 2005 wouldn't be all that great. Unfortunately, given the economy's current imbalances, we will be lucky to get that.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C.

© 2006 Miami Herald

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

As politicians led by President Bush scrambled to ditch campaign contributions from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cautioned Republicans they risk losing control of congressional majorities if they try to put all the blame on lobbyists.

"You can't have a corrupt lobbyist unless you have a corrupt member (of Congress) or a corrupt staff. This was a team effort," Gingrich told a Rotary Club lunch in Washington on Wednesday. He called for systematic changes to reduce the enormous financial advantages that incumbents have in congressional elections.

As head of a conservative movement based on ethics concerns and promises to curb federal growth, Gingrich led the GOP in 1994 to its first House majority in 42 years. But he decided to resign in 1998 when Republicans lost seats a year after Gingrich himself was fined $300,000 for violating House rules barring the use of tax-exempt foundations for political purposes.

He said the GOP leaders, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., need to resist mere "lobbyist bashing" and push campaign finance changes, along with smaller and more effective government.

"If they intend to retain a majority, then ... they need to take the lead in saying to the country we need to clean this mess up," Gingrich told reporters. "But any effort to push this under the rug, to say this is just one bad apple: That's baloney."

So far the primary response by politicians has been to separate themselves from campaign contributions they took from Abramoff or Indian tribes he represented — either by returning them or donating them to charity.

In just the two days since Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday in Washington to three federal felonies, more than 40 elected federal officials have given up Abramoff donations, joining a dozen who did so last year.

This week's list was headed by Republicans Bush, Frist, Hastert, House Majority Leader Roy Blunt of Missouri and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, who faces legal problems of his own. But some Democrats joined in, including Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

Republicans dominated the list — not surprising given that Abramoff, a friend of DeLay's, gave far more to them than to Democrats.

The scandal's effect on the 2006 election was on the mind of many who jettisoned the donations.

"I wish it hadn't happened because it's not going to help us keep our majority," conceded Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio.

As Abramoff pleaded guilty to a second set of felony charges Wednesday, this time in Florida, officials said Bush's 2004 re-election campaign intended to give up $6,000 in donations from the lobbyist, his wife and a client.

A spokeswoman for Blunt, Burson Taylor, said, "While we firmly believe the contributions were legal at the time of receipt, the plea indicates that such contributions may not have been given in the spirit in which they were received."

Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, under federal investigation over his links to Abramoff, joined in the rush.

The Republican scramble to shed cash that once was eagerly sought underscored the potential political problem the party faces in this election year.

Gingrich told reporters he thinks Republicans should elect a permanent replacement for DeLay. In addition to links with Abramoff, the Texan is battling campaign finance charges in his home state of Texas but hopes to regain his leadership post.

Regula, who came to Congress in 1973 and survived post-Watergate elections that crippled his party, said the implications of the Abramoff plea deals could be devastating for the GOP. "I was in the minority for 22 years and the majority for 11, and having tried it both ways, I definitely prefer the majority."

Frist issued a statement placing ethics issues on the Senate agenda for the year. He said he intends to "examine and act on any necessary changes to improve transparency and accountability for our body when it comes to lobbying."

For their part, House Democrats signaled they intend to make ethics an element in their drive to gain a majority in next fall's elections.

"It's more important for these Republicans to come clean with the American people about ... what (they) did for Jack Abramoff and his special interest friends in return for those campaign contributions," said Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the House Democratic campaign organization.

Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

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