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Cato Daily Dispatch for September 9, 2003

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Reserves, Nat'l Guard Face Longer Stay in Iraq
Justices Hear Vigorous Attacks on New Campaign Finance Law
Justice Orders Canadian Drug Importer to Close

Reserves, Nat'l Guard Face Longer Stay in Iraq

USA Today reports, "Like active duty troops held longer than expected in Iraq, National Guard and reservists also are having their tours of duty extended, defense officials said Tuesday. With the Army stretched thin by the Iraq campaign, the global war on terror and other duty around the world, officials ordered that Guard and Army Reserve troops now in Iraq and surrounding countries serve 12-month tours."

In "Troops in Saudi Arabia Are Superfluous and Dangerous", Cato Institute Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Christopher Preble, writes that "American forces in the Middle East are not just unnecessary, they are demonstrably harmful. In late February 2003, before the start of the war, Wolfowitz admitted that the price paid to keep forces in the region had been 'far more than money.' Anger at American pressure on Iraq, and resentment over the stationing of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, Wolfowitz conceded, had 'been Osama bin Laden's principal recruiting device.' Looking ahead to the post-Hussein period, Wolfowitz implied that the removal of Hussein would enable the United States to withdraw troops from the region. 'I can't imagine anyone here wanting to . . . be there for another 12 years to continue helping recruit terrorists.

"The president of the United States should never submit American foreign policy goals to the vagaries of international public opinion. But when the troops serve no useful purpose, and when their presence is known to contribute to anti-American sentiment, and when those who wish us ill capitalize upon this anti-Americanism to encourage disgruntled psychopaths to fly airplanes into buildings, it is clear that our forces in the Middle East make America less, not more, secure."

Preble is the author of a Cato Policy Analysis, "After Victory: Toward a New Military Posture in the Persian Gulf".

Justices Hear Vigorous Attacks on New Campaign Finance Law

"With the first caucuses and primaries of campaign 2004 bearing down on them, the justices of the Supreme Court convened yesterday for an unusual late-summer oral argument on campaign finance law, and when it was over, the four-hour debate seemed only to have injected a new element of uncertainty into the looming political season," reports The Washington Post.

The Cato Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court case, arguing that its campaign finance restrictions violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. The brief can be found at http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/bcra2.pdf.

Writing in the Cato Institute's Regulation magazine, Senior Fellow Robert Levy and independent attorney Erik Jaffe write, "Rarely has government been able to prove actual corruption from campaign contributions. Instead, to justify its regulations, government insists that we must prevent a "perception" of corruption that might shake confidence in our democratic institutions. But mere public suspicions or misperceptions afford no basis for ignoring our constitutional scheme. Rather, the proper answer is either more speech, the election of candidates voluntarily practicing the public's notion of virtue, or - if the existing system cannot hold the public's confidence - a constitutional amendment.

"As for money, it is just a symptom. Overweening government has wormed its way into nearly every aspect of our lives. Our pervasive regulatory and redistributive state creates huge incentives for profiteering. Because of the big government problem there is a big money problem. By cutting government down to size, we can minimize the influence of big money. Restoring the Framers' notion of enumerated, delegated, and thus limited powers will get the state out of our lives and out of our wallets."

Justice Orders Canadian Drug Importer to Close

"The Justice Department ordered Rx Depot to close up shop, as the Bush administration for first time moved to shut down one of the numerous chains of Internet stores that promise to sell senior citizens cheaper drugs from Canada," reports the Associated Press.

In "Conservative Drug Split", The Cato Institute's President and Founder, Ed Crane, and Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon argue that drug reimportation should be permitted in a free society. "In a nutshell, if foreign governments want to pay less - and will not pay more even if it means their own citizens will go without better drugs - then let those governments police the no-resell terms that enable them to get the lower prices," they write. "Right now, not only do Americans pay higher prices because foreigners refuse to pay the actual costs of drugs, but they pay the enforcement costs of that arrangement as well, including restrictions on their freedom. And if foreign governments cannot police those discriminatory contracts - because the incentive to resell, on one side, and to buy more cheaply, on the other side, makes enforcement difficult or impossible - then let a truly free market, encumbered only by enforceable contracts in restraint of trade, set prices at whatever the market will bear. It is neither right nor good that Americans bear so great a portion of the health-care costs of the world."

Christopher Kilmer, editor, ckilmer@cato.org