October 13, 2000

No Role for U.S. In Arab-Israeli War
Government Competing with Private E-Commerce
Fewer Helicopters, More Firepower for Colombia

No Role for U.S. In Arab-Israeli War

Israeli helicopter gunships rocketed Ramallah and Gaza City yesterday after a Palestinian mob there stabbed and stomped to death two Israeli reserve soldiers and then paraded a mutilated body through town, according to The New York Times. Blaming the Israelis' vigilante killings squarely on the Palestinian Authority, Israelis described their rocket attacks as "limited" and "symbolic" responses, delivered with warning so the targeted sites could be evacuated and casualties kept low.

"If this is not war, I don't know what else it is," said Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official. "If these tanks and choppers firing missiles at a civilian population do not constitute war, then I don't know what war is."

In "U.S. Should Stay Out of Arab-Israeli Conflict," Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies Leon Hadar argues that the conflict does not threaten any significant national interests and that the United States would be best served by staying out of the looming war.

"Unless the persistence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict harms crucial U.S. national interests, Washington should allow the violence to run its course," Hadar writes. "What is now taking place in the region is a civil war between Jews and Arabs that will determine the borders and the demographic makeup of Israel and an independent Palestinian state. In other words, it is a parochial conflict similar to many others around the world."

Government Competing with Private E-Commerce

Some federal online services "go too far" into the realm of electronic commerce and have "begun to encroach dangerously on business activities that are more appropriately served by private enterprise," critics said yesterday in releasing the findings of a new study, according to The Washington Post.

Initiatives such as the U.S. Postal Service's "eBillPay" program threaten to turn the government into a "publicly funded market competitor" against which private companies could not afford to compete, said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. The Postal Service program for online billing and payment intrudes into services "actively provided by the private sector," the report states. Similarly, industry is concerned that the Internal Revenue Service might provide online tax-preparation software that would constitute federal incursion into markets served by private companies.

In testimony before Congress, Director of Regulatory Studies Edward L. Hudgins explained the basic inequity of the USPS's entry into private markets. Unlike private enterprises, the Postal Service has special preferential borrowing privileges with the federal government, can increase stamp prices without fear of customers turning to competitors, has billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities backed by the federal government, and is exempt from most taxes.

The Cato Handbook for Congress calls for the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service and the repeal of the Private Express Statutes that preserve the postal monopoly. In "Cancel Snail Mail?" Director of Fiscal Policy Studies Stephen Moore calls on consumers to use the Internet rather than "the most anti-consumer company in America."

Fewer Helicopters, More Firepower for Colombia

Clinton administration officials said yesterday they have reduced the number of U.S. helicopters destined for counter-drug operations in Colombia in order to spend more money fully arming the aircraft, according to The Washington Post.

The announcement that only 13 Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters would be sent to the Colombian army, instead of the 16 originally approved by Congress last summer, came as the administration sought to fend off congressional criticism that neither the U.S. government, nor its Colombian counterpart, is ready to carry out their ambitious, joint anti-narcotics strategy.

A General Accounting Office report released yesterday, titled "U.S. Assistance to Colombia Will Take Years to Produce Results," charged that more than $600 million in past U.S. counternarcotics assistance authorized for Colombia between 1996 and 1999 had been of "limited utility" because of poor planning and implementation by both governments.

In "Declaring an Armistice in the International Drug War," Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter demanded an armistice to the failed international drug war that has hurt all sides of the conflict. In "Time to End the Drug War," Assistant Director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty Jacobo L. Rodriguez explains that "efforts to eradicate crops and interdiction of traffic -- that is, efforts to reduce the supply of drugs -- put only a small dent in the profit margins of traffickers."

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