If this is untidy, I’d hate to see Rumsfeld’s garage

An editorial in USA Today has a little something to say about Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments the other day:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered the nation a remarkable civics lesson the other day. Asked about the widespread lawlessness, looting and anarchy racing through Iraq, Rumsfeld said, in effect, no big deal. “Freedom’s untidy,” Rumsfeld said. “And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Those are stirring words that will no doubt be thrown back at law enforcement officials after every episode of civil unrest in this country. The “Rumsfeld defense” will become a tool in the arsenal of any halfway decent lawyer: “Freedom is untidy, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and somehow that guy’s television set ended up in the back of my client’s pickup truck. Is America great, or what?”

It’s just the latest of Rumsfeld’s boneheaded remarks about life and diplomacy and war that we’ve been treated to during his entertaining Pentagon briefings. But this riff was particularly misguided, because once again it shows a disregard for international law that, in the long run, jeopardizes the legitimacy of our war effort in Iraq.

…

Given the administration’s penchant for embracing only those parts of international law that serve its purposes, it is easy to imagine that the Bush administration will steer clear of the law of occupation as well. Already, the U.S. mantra is that liberation, not occupation, is what the war was all about.

By its inconsistent approach to international rules of behavior, the United States has made its complaints about the Iraqi regime less credible and more complicated to adjudicate. It could regain some ground by fully acknowledging its obligations under the law of occupation. The administration may have succeeded on the battlefield, but it still needs to understand that if it expects others to play by the rules, it must do so, too.