Cato Daily Dispatch for December 4, 2003
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Australia Agrees to U.S. Missile Defense ShieldBush Team Defends Hamdi Detention
Official Calls for Renewed Drunk Driving Crackdown
Australia Agrees to U.S. Missile Defense Shield
According to The Associated Press, "Australia has agreed to participate in a U.S. program to build a defensive missile shield. Washington hopes to develop a shield against ballistic missiles, arguing that 'rogue states' like North Korea could soon have missiles to threaten the United States. It wants allies such as Britain and Australia involved in the project, particularly for the use of satellite tracking stations in their countries."
Charles Peña, Cato's director of defense policy studies, argues that "the real rationale for missile defense is to protect U.S. forces so they can engage in military intervention throughout the world to enforce a Pax Americana-a strategy of empire by another name. But such a strategy is simply the old Cold War strategy run amok and without a Soviet enemy. And it ignores the obvious: the result will be increased resentment of and animosity toward what is perceived by the rest of the world as an imperialist America."
In "Missile Defense: Defending America or Building Empire?" Peña writes: "A better alternative-especially given the post-September 11, 2001, realities of the al-Qaeda terrorist threat-is for the United States to adopt a more restrained foreign policy. A more prudent security strategy would recognize that U.S. security would be better served by not engaging in unnecessary military deployments and interventions that fuel the flames of vehement anti-American sentiment."
Bush Team Defends Hamdi Detention
"The Bush administration yesterday mounted its first full defense in the Supreme Court of presidential power to order the capture and long-term detention of 'enemy combatants' during the war on terrorism," the Boston Globe reports. "The justices should not even get involved in any review of that power, because there is no constitutional doubt about it, the Justice Department argued in a lengthy legal brief.
"The document was filed in the case of a U.S. citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been detained for two years by the U.S. military since being picked up in "The Bush administration yesterday mounted its first full defense in the Supreme Court of presidential power to order the capture and long-term detention of 'enemy combatants' during the war on terrorism," the Boston Globe reports.Afghanistan."
In "Hamdi Case Reveals Unchecked Power of President Bush," Cato Senior Fellow Robert A. Levy argues that the Bush administration lacks both constitutional and statutory authority to indefinitely detain Hamdi. "That's too much unchecked power in the hands of the president," he says. "We cannot permit the executive branch to declare unilaterally that a U.S. citizen may be characterized as an enemy combatant, whisked away, detained indefinitely without charges, denied legal counsel, and prevented from arguing to a judge that he is innocent.
"That does not mean the Justice Department must set people free to unleash weapons of mass destruction. But it does mean, at a minimum, that Congress must get involved and exercise its responsibility to enact a new legal regimen for citizen-detainees in time of national emergency. That regimen must respect citizens' rights under the Constitution, including the right to judicial review of executive branch decisions. When the executive, legislative, and judicial branches agree on the framework, the potential for abuse is diminished. When only the executive has acted, the foundation of a free society starts to erode.
Official Calls for Renewed Drunk Driving Crackdown
"Efforts to curb drunken driving, which have stalled in recent years, need to be jump-started, the government's top highway safety official says. Among Dr. Jeffrey Runge's suggestions: more prosecutors and courts dedicated to drunken driving cases," according to USA Today.
In "Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking," a new Cato Policy Analysis, Radley Balko, editor of Cato.org, writes that aggressive drinking and driving laws are aimed not at rounding up seriously inebriated drivers who threaten highway safety but at putting the fear of a drunken driving arrest into social drinkers, most of whom can responsibly mix a drink or two over dinner with the drive home."
"The aim of the neoprohibitionist movement seems to fall short of constitutionally mandated sobriety," Balko writes. "Rather, the neoprohibitionists seem more interested in inconveniencing social drinkers, embarrassing them, and threatening them with draconian drinking and driving laws to the point where consuming alcohol away from home just isn't worth the hassle."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
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