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Cato Daily Dispatch for August 29, 2003

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Ashcroft Taking Fire from GOP Stalwarts
University of Michigan's New Affirmative Action Policy
Moderate Iraqi Shi'ite Leader Murdered

Ashcroft Taking Fire from GOP Stalwarts

"BOISE, Idaho--Even here, in a bedrock Republican state in the heart of the conservative Mountain West, a lot of people think Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has gone too far," according to The Washington Post. "'Ashcroft wants more power,' said state Rep. Charles Eberle (R-Post Falls), who has drafted a resolution critical of the Patriot Act. 'What a lot of us in Idaho are saying is, 'Let's not get rid of the checks and balances.' ... People out here in the West are used to taking care of themselves. We don't like the government intruding on our constitutional rights.'"

In "Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism", Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, writes that "government officials typically respond to terrorist attacks by proposing and enacting 'antiterrorism' legislation. To assuage the wide-spread anxiety of the populace, policymakers make the dubious claim that they can prevent terrorism by curtailing the privacy and civil liberties of the people. Because everyone wants to be safe and secure, such legislation is usually very popular and passes the legislative chambers of Congress with lopsided majorities. As the president signs the antiterrorism bill into effect, too many people indulge in the assumption that they are now safe, since the police, with their newly acquired powers, will somehow be able to foil the terrorists before they can kill again. The plain truth, however, is that it is only a matter of time before the next attack.

"This cycle of terrorist attack followed by government curtailment of civil liberties must be broken-or our society will eventually lose the key attribute that has made it great: freedom. The American people can accept the reality that the president and Congress are simply not capable of preventing terrorist attacks from occurring. Policymakers should stop pretending otherwise and focus their attention on combating terrorism within the framework of a free society."

University of Michigan's New Affirmative Action Policy

"Applicants to the University of Michigan now will be asked for financial information and to write up to four essays, including one on diversity, under an admissions program announced Thursday," reports The Detroit News. "The new process, required when the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down U-M's point-based undergraduate admissions system that rewarded all under-represented minorities, still will consider race but emphasize grades and test scores over all other factors."

In an article, "Affirmative Action Can't Be Mended", Cato Institute adjunct scholar Walter E. Williams writes that affirmative action is the wrong approach to solving the problems that face minorities in the United States. "Clearly, blacks have suffered historical injustices, and every vestige of discrimination has not been eliminated in America," Williams writes. "But discrimination is by no means the barrier that it once was. We can better serve the interests of large numbers of blacks by focusing our energies on fraudulent education, disintegrating families and inner cities with climates that are hostile to economic development and personal safety. Even if affirmative action were not a violation of justice, not a zero-sum game, and not racially polarizing, it would still be a poor cover-up for the real problems and the real work that needs to be done."

Williams also authored a longer piece by the same title in Cato Journal.

Moderate Iraqi Shi'ite Leader Murdered

"Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, killed by a car bomb in the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf on Friday, was the long-exiled leader of one of the main Shi'ite Muslim groups jockeying for power in postwar Iraq," reports MSNBC. "Hakim had sought to avoid confrontation with U.S.-led forces occupying Iraq since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein .... But he said in a interview with Reuters in June that Iraq's Shi'ite majority could turn against the U.S.-led occupiers if they were not given political compensation for decades of persecution under Saddam's dictatorship."

In a Policy Analysis, "After Victory: Toward a New Military Posture in the Persian Gulf", the Cato Institute's Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Christopher Preble, writes that "In keeping with the goal of minimizing the costs and risks of a continued military presence, American efforts in Iraq should be limited, focusing solely on the swift transitioning to an Iraqi interim government empowered to move toward self-government. Beyond that, the United States must be willing to accept the wishes of the Iraqi people and should not assume that a friendly government can or should be imposed at the barrel of a gun. Likewise, policymakers should not presume that an Iraqi government that does not possess all of the attributes of a liberal democracy would be hostile to the United States, much less threatening to U.S. vital security interests."

Christopher Kilmer, editor, ckilmer@cato.org