I don’t think the news that Dubya was warned before Sept. 11 about Al Qaeda plans to hijack planes is very earth shattering. As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice pointed out yesterday, Dubya had no specifics to work with. He was not told when the hijacking were supposed to happen, how they would be done, or that they planned to use the planes as missiles.

Honestly, if Dubya had shut down the aviation system based on these reports, I and many others probably would have had a fit. Sept. 11 was completely unprecedented and unpredictable, and this new information doesn’t change that. Dubya was not given any really useful information, and while we can blame the CIA and FBI for their missteps
(and we should), the truth is that telling the future is not an easy business.

That’s why showing strength is important. By responding to Sept. 11 the way he did, Dubya made it clear that terrorist attacks on the United States would not be tolerated. Before he got sidetracked by the axis of evil business, Dubya was doing the best thing that could be done to prevent future terrorist attacks — wipe out the terrorist groups themselves.

Government officials face a tough challenge when it comes to these vague threats they are made aware of. They cannot shut down their town, locality, state or country completely on the off chance an attack may happen at some point in the future. Even by letting people know, they just cause panic. Vague threats elicit vague responses. But Sept. 11 was a real tragedy, and deserves a real and effective response to make sure it never happens again.

Further, raising a ruckus about this will probably have a perverse effect. Instead of cracking down on intelligence agencies to make sure they do a better job, they will get more funding — much of it completely unrelated to Sept. 11. And Dubya will redouble his efforts to weaken our civil liberties while pouring more money into defense, war efforts irrelevant to Sept. 11 and boondoggles like federalized airport security.

Free-Market.Net‘s J.D. Tuccille argues that the libertarian movement is maturing and growing increasingly influential. It’s not just Cato. The Foundation for Economic Education and Laissez Faire Books are also celebrating significant anniversaries this year.

He concludes that the movement’s “ideas can no longer be ignored.” And yet they routinely are. How about that?

Here are a couple of good Cato commentaries on follies committed in the name of the war on terror. Ivan Eland writes about how the Defense Department is exploiting the righteous concern with defense to unnecessarily fatten its budget.

And Doug Bandow makes an excellent argument against the United States’ foolish alliance with Saudi Arabia. Of course, Saudi Arabia is an oligarchy with absolutely zero respect for women’s rights. And Saudi Arabia funded extremist Islamic activities all over the Middle East. We all know that. But Saudi Arabia’s supposed trump card — oil –is not the ace in the hole they’d have us believe, as Bandow explains:

True, Saudi Arabia has about one quarter of the world’s resources. However, this figure vastly overstates the importance of Saudi oil, which accounted for about 10 percent of world production last year. Were Saudi Arabia to fall, prices would rise substantially only if the conqueror, whether internal or external, held the oil off of the market.

Such a policy would, however, defeat the very purpose of conquest, even for a fundamentalist regime; in fact, bin Laden has called oil the source of Arab power. A targeted boycott against only the United States would be ineffective, since oil is a uniform product available around the world.
A new regime might decide to pump less oil to raise prices. Yet countries have long found it difficult to coordinate production and limit cheating.

In any case, the economic impact of such a step would decline over time. Sharply higher prices would bring forth new supplies, which have actually increased over the last two decades.

Further, Saudi Arabia’s power and wealth is deeply resented in the Middle East, and the U.S. alliance only exposes our country’s hypocrisy in supposedly favoring democracy and freedom while standing by such an obviously unjust government. In case you needed another reason for why the United States should distance itself from Saudia Arabia, and fast, read Bandow’s column.

Previously, I linked to an article by someone sympathetic to the Palestinians who argued that the United States should disentangle itself from the Middle East. Now here’s a provocative column by WorldNetDaily‘s Joseph Farah — a pro-Israeli hawk — that argues that Israel’s long-term interests are best served by United States getting out. Here’s the nut of Farah’s argument:

The truth is the U.S. has no keys to peace in the Mideast. No amount of arm-twisting, lobbying, negotiations, monitoring or strong words will get Arafat to put aside his hatred of the Jews and his commitment to their destruction.

Placing more Americans in the Middle East only provides the terrorists with more targets.

This is not a conflict between two sides with legitimate grievances, as Zinni and the State Department like to pretend. This is not a conflict where we can expect good-faith dialogue from both sides. This is not a conflict where goodwill alone — nor even self-interest — can help set aside evil intentions.

Of course, in Farah’s view, the evil intentions belong to Arafat and the Palestinian terrorist organizations. The truth is, no matter where you stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there’s no reason to believe that American involvement makes things any better.

So now Dubya wants to encourage single-sex public schools. Whoopee. Another education gimmick with very little evidence to back it up.

It may be that some boys and girls are better served by a single-sex educational environment, but all children are benefited by true educational choice, which is the one item Dubya has refused to push because he knows it’s a political loser. Parents are in the best position to decide whether their children require single-sex education, and in a competitive educational marketplace, such options would arise to meet the demand. Tinkering with the current educational morass is just more rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

In the end — after all the whining from conservatives — former President Carter said what needed to be said in Cuba. On national TV, he told the Cuban people that the U.S. should lift the embargo and that Cubans deserved an opportunity to vote on the Varela referendum.

According to Fox News, the referendum would ask Cubans “if they favor human rights, electoral reform, an amnesty for political prisoners and the right to have a business.” Obviously, a free and fair referendum would yield overwhelmingly positive results, and public pressure would be put on Castro to change things.

Carter was perhaps naïve in thinking that his time in Cuba will have any impact, but his soft approach got him something no hard-liner has ever gotten: an unfiltered appearance on national TV and freedom to meet with Castro’s political opponents. But he’s right on something else. He said, “Because the United States is the most powerful nation, we should take the first step.” By that he meant that the United States should first take steps to end the embargo.

I agree. I think the embargo is stupid and counterproductive to begin with, though. So, even if it is not taken as a sign of good faith by Castro — which it probably would not — it would still make Americans and Cubans better off. Castro has done just fine with the embargo in place, as it has given him plenty of ammunition to deflect blame for the failures of his communist disaster.

But ordinary Cubans’ suffering has been immeasurably worsened, and Americans have been cut off from the dreadful realities of Cuban life. By not allowing Americans to trade or visit, the government has only made it harder for them to help Cubans improve their lives and seek alternatives to Castro’s brutal dictatorship. Embargoes always hurt the least powerful in a given society, and operate on the ugly principle that the oppressed must be made to suffer so that they will revolt.

Innocent people who have no control over their leaders shouldn’t be cut off from the world’s resources. It is not their fault they are oppressed. They shouldn’t be punished even further, and they shouldn’t be used like pawns on a chess board. By doing so, we deny them their dignity and undermine our own claim to moral superiority. I think Carter understands this. Which is why he went to Cuba in the first place and why — all things considered — he deserves credit for sticking to his guns despite intense criticism.

Here are a couple more stories about Cato‘s 25th anniversary. One is a profile of co-founder Ed Crane. He sounds like an interesting character.

What’s especially admirable about him is the way he works in Washington without falling prey to its temptations. Cato does something seemingly impossible for a libertarian think tank: it is both principled and influential.

The other story is a column by Claudia Rossett in the Wall Street Journal toasting Peter Bauer, who was awarded the inaugural Milton Friedman Prize at the Cato 25th anniversary dinner, as well as Cato itself. Very nice.

So goes the argument against gun rights. But 911 didn’t work for Ronyale White, who waited 17 minutes for police to respond to her call for help. Her ex-husband, against whom she had a restraining order, shot her to death before police arrived.

This was an extreme case of police incompetence, though, and it still remains unclear whether the original car dispatched ever even arrived at the scene. But the truth remains that many women find themselves in a similar situation and choose to arm themselves in self-defense. And cities like Chicago don’t allow it, not even for self-defense in their own homes, not to mention out on the streets.

The police cannot be expected, and are not required to, stop crimes before they occur. Not everyone wants a gun and certainly not everyone should own one (e.g., convicted felons). But law-abiding people should have the option of owning a gun. Ronyale White is one person who would have been much better off than relying on the Chicago police.

When it comes to government spending money on anti-teen pregnancy program, the best advice is to abstain, writes Cato’s Kimble Ainslie. The federal government’s already spending $50 million a year on abstinence programs, and Dubya wants to tack on another $138 billion.

But the programs have ambiguous results. Moreover, teen pregnancy has already gone down 22 percent since 1991. Here’s an especially telling point I hadn’t thought of before:

Finally, national teenage pregnancy and birth rate figures have often been intertwined with the rising rates of out-of-wedlock births in the general population.

For teenage girls, however, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births as a proportion of the general population has remained stable for more than four decades at about 14 percent. For those who say the problem of teenage pregnancy is getting worse, they are often mixing up their public policy problems; that is, teenage pregnancy and illegitimacy.

Out-of-wedlock births are another thorny issue, but the best path for government is to stop encouraging such births through welfare payments and to otherwise get out of the way. Ultimately, individuals need to learn from their communities and from their families how and when to have families. Hearing your president tell you to “Just Say No” to sex will probably be about as effective as that other “Just Say No” program.

At least, the people in his administration do. A House bill would allow trained pilots to carry guns to protect themselves and protect passengers from a terrorist hijacking. But Dubya’s crew isn’t so hot on the idea:

Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge oppose the legislation. Mineta has said guns in the cockpit are not needed because cockpit doors have been reinforced, preventing terrorists from getting control of the plane.

Apparently, the pilots themselves don’t feel that’s enough. Why shouldn’t they have the option of arming themselves? They’ve got guns with special bullets that would not pierce the skin of a plane. No pilot who didn’t want to carry a gun would have to. And any pilot who volunteered would have to undergo special training.

I suppose Dubya & Co. would just prefer to leave the pilots and their passengers as sitting ducks. Or do they really think that federalized airport security is anything but a joke? The Justice Department recently said it thinks that the Second Amendment applies to individuals, not just militias. I guess pilots don’t fall into either category.

Remember Wisconsin LP gubernatorial candidate Ed Thompson? Here’s another story about him. This one covers his whirlwind tour of Washington, D.C. It’s hard to believe that his brother Tommy is a cabinet secretary and Ed claims to have never before been east of Chicago.

Sure, this story is not very substantive, but if it takes some personality to get people to vote for you, then so be it. Votes are votes in the end. We’ll see how much space these papers will have for colorful profiles in the heat of the race in fall.