Outside the Beltway

LAW IN IRAQ

James Joyner · Thursday, May 1, 2003 · 1 comment

David Plotz has six new ideas for bringing real security to Iraq. I won’t bother listing them here; go read them if you like. His main point seems to be that we needed to “flood the zone” with a lot of troops and cops and generally been much more ruthless than we have been in order to have established “law and order” from the get-go. While there is some appeal to this argument–establishing basic security is the first order of business for any government and, indeed, its raison detre–the tactics Plotz suggests would have been a huge PR disaster for the US. The casualties are troops are inflicting just defending themselves from crazed nuts with AK-47s are enough of a problem. Going in to bust heads like Buford Pusser would have been simply idiotic.

BTW, this Axis of Weevil thing must be rubbing off. One doesn’t often combine “get-go,” “raison detre” and “Buford Pusser” in the same paragraph.