Precedent?

Gateway Pundit post this:

North Ossetian Leader Aleksander Dzasokhov stepped down Tuesday. Dzasokov said that he was thinking about his resignation for some time: Alexander Dzasokhov, 71, the president of North Ossetia (a Russian constituent republic in the Noth Caucasus) submitted his resignation, the Russian President's authorized representative in the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak, said. Dzasokhov's term expires in January 2006. Dzasokhov said he would be 'setting a precedent' by becoming the country's first regional leader to resign early rather than ask Putin to nominate him for another term.

It seems that the largest factor in this is anger over the Beslan hostage tradgedy. I am not sure that Dzasokov, or any of the Russian service members deserve any blame for those horrendous events. As we have seen in the U.S. though, a sizable portion of the people will insist that any terrorist attack must be the result of a conspiracy or a huge level on incompetance on the part of the government. They simply cannot accept, that something as powerful as the government can still fail to protect them, even when it was doing mostly the right thing and trying it's best. The reality is, sometimes the bad guys win. (via Instapundit)