OxBlog

# Posted 9:12 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

TAKING CHARGE: Jerry Bremer wants people to know that there is a new sheriff in town. While Baghdad might bear a striking resemblance to the Wild Wild West, I still don't think that gunning down looters is a particularly good idea.

With considerable justification, Bob Herbert is up in arms about this new idea. (In fact, he seems to be so angry that the NYT has taken down his nice smiley photograph and replaced it with an angry and menacing one.) On the bright side, Herbert reports that the Army is already backing away from Bremer's idea.

While Herbert thinks that the shoot-on-sight proposal is just one more reason that the UN should be in charge of the occupation rather than the United States, the armed forces' immediate resistance to the proposal suggests that American authorities are fairly well able to separate the good ideas from the bad.

Moreover, Herbert ought to realize that the administration has now faced four weeks worth of intense criticism for its failure to be forceful enough in its efforts to restore order in Iraq. While Bremer's proposal was an overreaction, it's not hard to understand where it was coming from.

Even so, in the final analysis, the Administration cannot blame the media for its own shortcomings. If the President want to get things right in Iraq, the first principle of the occupation has to be "The Buck Stops Here".

UPDATE: Rumsfeld denies that any shoot-on-sight order is in the works.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion