Think tanks wrap-up

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering brief opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks. This is the first of two wrap-ups for September 20.

The National Center for Public Policy Research

(NCPPR is a communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems, based on the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility. NCPPR was founded to provide the conservative movement with a versatile and energetic organization capable of responding quickly and decisively to late-breaking issues, based on thorough research.)

CHICAGO -- Ten Second Response: Senate Continues to Bicker Over Forest Health Amendment

by Gretchen Randall

Background: Democrats and Republicans in the Senate continue to disagree on details of an amendment to the Department of Interior appropriations bill that would allow thinning of forests of insect-infested trees and in areas near homes and communities. The main disagreements are over the number of acres to be exempt from normal regulatory appeals and whether to exempt them from legal challenges -- fire prevention strategies that were accorded to South Dakota in an earlier bill.

Ten Second Response (Option 1): Again, it seems that Democrats and environmentalists would rather see forests burn than be managed effectively.

Ten Second Response (Option 2): If exemptions from judicial review are OK for South Dakota's forest maintenance, why not for the rest of our forests?

Thirty Second Response: Wildlife biologists estimate 46 species of birds are harmed by the lack of effective forest management. In addition, millions of acres are lost to super hot ground-sterilizing wildfires every year. Thinning trees of all ages is essential to saving our forests. Let's let the forest management experts manage the forests and eliminate the temptation to be "Monday morning quarterbacks."

Discussion: The Republican amendment introduced by Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is modeled after the exemption Senator Daschle (D-S.D.) received for the Black Hills National Forest in his home state of South Dakota. To date 65,000 fires have burned 6.5 million acres across the nation this year and Craig's amendment would allow thinning of trees in 10 million of the 33 million acres the Forest Service says are in most danger of catastrophic fires. Senate Democrats have not agreed to allow the rest of the nation's

forests the same exemptions from judicial review that South Dakota received. President Bush has said, "We have a simple choice. We can act now to protect these forests or we can stand by and watch them burn."

Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, noted in a recent editorial the negative effects of overcrowded forests on wildlife pointing out that in the recent Biscuit Fire in Oregon 125,000 acres of habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl were destroyed.

(Gretchen Randall is the director of the John P. McGovern, M.D. Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at the National Center for Public Policy Research.)

The Institute for Public Accuracy

(The IPA is a nationwide consortium of policy researchers that seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for experts whose perspectives are often overshadowed by major think tanks and other influential institutions.)

WASHINGTON -- Delegation to Iraq

On Sept. 19 two more members of a delegation organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy returned to the United States from Iraq. The delegation included Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), who returned on Sept. 17.

-- James Abourezk, a former U.S. senator and author of "Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate."

"I am pleased that the Iraqi government has decided to again admit U.N. inspectors. We hope it will lead to a genuine reduction of tensions, not just a postponement of military action. In any case, a new U.S. attack on Baghdad would be a mistake for humanitarian reasons. The reality is that the people of Iraq have still not recovered from the 1991 war. Few people in the West realize that one in every 10 Iraqi children dies before his or her first birthday, the lingering result of infrastructure degradation, unclean water and communicable disease spread in the wake of the 1991 war. One child in three suffers from chronic malnutrition, according to the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. I learned of the disturbing evidence of the effects of Depleted Uranium contamination on the environment and on leukemia and cancer rates in children. The U.S. military used DU in its artillery shells in 1991, resulting in deformed births throughout southern Iraq. If the United States does start a new and unprovoked war, it will stand in violation of international law, the U.N. Charter, and basic humane values."

-- Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

"Much of our discussion with Iraqi officials involved urging them to agree to United Nations fettered access for U.N. weapons inspectors ... . A couple of days later, Iraq chose a long shot for averting war -- appreciably better than no chance at all, but bringing its own risks. Several years ago, Washington used UNSCOM inspectors for espionage totally U.N.-related to the U.N. team's authorized mission. This fall, inspectors poking around the country could furnish valuable data to the United States, heightening the effectiveness of a subsequent military attack ... . Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told our delegation that a omprehensive 'formula' would be needed for a long-term solution; presumably the formula would include a U.S. pledge of non-aggression and a lifting of sanctions. No such formula is in sight.

Instead, the White House remains determined to inflict a horrendous war. Meanwhile, the Democratic 'leadership' in the Senate is lining up to put vast quantities of blood on its hands."

-- Dr. James Jennings, president of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization, Jennings is in Iraq until Sept. 22.

"President Bush claims, as his father did, that he 'has no quarrel with the Iraqi people.' But every family I meet here in Iraq is suffering from what he is doing. The economic sanctions the U.S. government insists on mean malnutrition, prohibitions on desperately needed medicines, a lack of employment and people having to sell their belongings just to survive. Yesterday I had people beg me for cancer medicine. The United Nations' '661 committee' is blocking many such necessities -- this is uncivilized behavior."

The Competitive Enterprise Institute

(CEI is a conservative, free-market think tank that supports principles of free enterprise and limited government, opposes government regulation, and actively engages in public policy debate.)

WASHINGTON -- C\Spin: Software Wars -- Open Source and the N. Y. Times

by James V. DeLong

The New York Times recently editorialized about Linux and open source software, exuberant that an operating system "written and updated by volU.N.teer programmers in a commU.N.itarian spirit, and available for free" might challenge Microsoft's Windows and result in major savings in computer costs.

The paper also exulted that governments such as Germany and China are pushing Linux, and it urged everyone, including U.S. agencies, to join them so as to foster competition.

The NYT view has some gold. Competition is always good. And the Linux backers have hold of an important truth, which is that persuading a lot of smart people each to devote a small part of their time to an effort can produce impressive results. They are also right to think that opening up computer code to the eyes of the whole programming commU.N.ity can be extremely productive. Microsoft itself sees increasing virtue in this idea, and is developing "shared source" to open up code to scrutiny while the company keeps firm hold of the pen.

But the NYT misses in some ways. First, none of this is "free." Software is a complicated industrial product requiring continuing re-creation and support, and money to support it must come from somewhere. Linux programmers are not street people who sleep on steam grates so as to indulge their passion. They are supported, often handsomely, by U.N.iversities and IT companies. Even this support is not sufficient to keep Linux going, and hardware companies, notably IBM, are now pouring billions into it. There is nothing wrong with this; IBM has good competitive reasons in that it wants to dish SU.N. and Microsoft. But the movement is not the folk song army depicted in the NYT.

If IT companies, universities, and IBM want to donate the fruits of their labor to computer purchasers, including governments, that is their privilege. But we have just gone through a half a decade in which the business model was "give it away," and it did not work. In the end, software might be bundled with hardware, or vendors might give away software tied to a services contract -- both are increasingly common -- but the code writers will want pay for producing it, which means money must ultimately come from the users somehow.

A second problem is the creation of applications for Linux. The General Public License that controls the program's distribution can be paraphrased as "thou shalt not charge for this program and its source code shall be public." This license is also viral; if you write an app for Linux, and incorporate any code covered by the GPL, then your app is also subject to the GPL, and it too becomes open source and free.

True open source believers think that this is just fine -- all apps should be open and free. But it is not clear that the freeware spirit, or the IT/university willingness to subsidize, runs deep enough to provide anything approaching the number of apps available for Windows, where good old reliable greed creates an incentive for developers. The Linux commU.N.ity is moving toward proprietary aps, but it is chancy. Writing aps without incorporating some operating system code is difficult, and those who want to engraft proprietary aps onto Linux are taking a legal risk.

Finally, governments should not treat this as an arena for industrial policy. The incentives fueling the Linux movement are not necessarily those required for long-term production of software suited for the public as well as the nerds. Governments, which are as naïve as editorial writers, should keep their hands off.

(James V. DeLong is a senior fellow in the Project on Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.)

The Cato Institute

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's military strategy will lead to a perpetual state of war, scholar says.

Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, says today's announcement that the United States will shift from deterrence to pre-emptive military action against hostile nations and groups is contrary to America's best interests and could lead to a perpetual state of war:

"The Bush administration unveiled a new national security strategy today that boldly but imprudently called for U.S. military primacy and preemptive attacks on potential threats. Such an aggressive policy does not comport well with the Founders' vision of what a republic's foreign policy should be.

"The Founders believed that the republic had a right of self-defense, but should normally have 'peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations.' In certain cases, the United States may need to preemptively strike terrorists but a general policy of what are really preventive attacks against nations states (attacking countries before they can become threats) could easily lead to a perpetual state of war to achieve peace. A perpetual state of war is likely to lead to a bloated government at home, an excessive accrual of power in the executive branch, an erosion of civil liberties, and even more retaliatory terrorism. Thus, instead of achieving peace, such a non-humble foreign policy would begin an endless cycle of strike and counterstrike."