What Bremer Got Wrong in Iraq

Despite Bremer's assertions, Saddam Hussein's regime was not a Sunni regime; it was a dictatorship with many complex alliances in Iraqi society, including some with Shiites. If anything, the old tyranny was a Tikriti regime, led by relatives and clansmen from Hussein's hometown.

In Bremer's mind, the way to occupy Iraq was not to view it as a nation but as a group of minorities. So he pitted the minority that was not benefiting from the system against the minority that was, and then expected them both to be grateful to him. Bremer ruled Iraq as if it were already undergoing a civil war, helping the Shiites by punishing the Sunnis. He did not see his job as managing the country; he saw it as managing a civil war. So I accuse him of causing one.

Bremer claims that Iraqis hated their army at the time of the U.S. invasion. In fact, the army was the most nationalist institution in the country, one that predated the Baath Party. In electing not to fight U.S. forces, the army was expecting to be recognized by the occupation -- and indeed, until Bremer arrived, it appeared that many soldiers and officers were hoping to cooperate with the Americans.

Bremer is wrong to say that Shiites hated the Iraqi army. He treats Iraqis as if they were Hutus and Tutsis, claiming that "Shiite conscripts were regularly brutalized and abused by their Sunni officers." This is just not true. To be sure, Sunnis were overrepresented in the officer corps, and Shiites sometimes felt as if they faced a glass ceiling. But just as there were Shiite ministers under Hussein, there were also Shiite generals. At least a third of the famous deck of cards of Iraqi leaders most wanted by the Americans were Shiites.

“Do you have evidence for the assertion about Bremer? I honestly am interested in better understanding the man and what he did.” ~ Theo

You may want to peruse the archives of Laurie Mylroie when you have time. http://www.mail-archive.com/ href=”mailto:sam11@erols.com”>sam11@erols.com/

Here’s one excerpt of what you’ll find there:

January 14, 2006

WSJ

The Bremer Paradox

The standard criticism of the former head of Iraq’s rebuilding is groundless. It’s the real errors of the man who cried “We got him” that remain troubling.

By ROBERT L. POLLOCK
January 14, 2006; Page P10

My Year in Iraq
By L. Paul Bremer III, with Malcolm McConnell
Simon & Schuster, 417 pages, $27

“...on the political front, Mr. Bremer stumbled badly. In “My Year in Iraq,” he claims that he was under persistent pressure from some Pentagon figures, who indulged a “reckless fantasy” that Iraqi sovereignty could be rapidly returned to the “unrepresentative” group of “exiles” who had formed the core of the anti-Saddam opposition. This argument is something of a straw man. The issue wasn’t so much one of sovereignty as one of putting an Iraqi face on the occupation. And Mr. Bremer could easily have done so by giving the Iraqis more governing responsibility and a more prominent place in the spotlight — all while reserving the right for the U.S. to intervene in extremis. Instead, he kept the spotlight on himself. Even as late as December 2003, seven months after his arrival, Mr. Bremer was still the “we” who famously announced “we got him” when Saddam was captured. Such missteps badly delayed the development of Iraqi self-government.

A senior American military commander once described Mr. Bremer to me as something of a “control freak.” The urge for control is on full display in “My Year in Iraq.” Mr. Bremer fulminates over inconsequential “leaks” and complains when free Iraqis dare to express opinions at odds with his own. Ahmed Chalabi is alleged to be “incorrigible” for contending that the Iraqi political process should move more quickly than Mr. Bremer envisions. Indeed, Mr. Bremer’s unhappiness with challenges to his authority leads him to accuse two of the most capable and secular-minded leaders in Iraq — Mr. Chalabi and Jalal Talabani (the less “tribal” of the two most prominent Kurds) — of “intriguing” against him.

Nor is Mr. Bremer shy about denigrating, as he has before, the rest of the 25 Iraqis who emerged as members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council in the summer of 2003. Echoing what he and his spokesman, Dan Senor, frequently told reporters at the time, Mr. Bremer accuses the council members of “lax work habits,” calling them so incompetent or indecisive that they (yes, he really writes this) “couldn’t organize a parade, let alone run the country.”

Even now, Mr. Bremer wonders at all the bad press that came out of Iraq during his tenure. But even as the security situation deteriorated, he himself was routinely giving reporters a bleak picture of the country’s political prospects. And, strangely, he was reluctant to replace his “unrepresentative” council of Iraqis with elected ones — until pro-democracy pressure from Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani made it clear that he had no other choice. Eventually, too, Washington intervened, shortening the long leash that Donald Rumsfeld had given Mr. Bremer and placing him under the daily supervision of Condoleezza Rice, then the U.S. national security adviser, and her new “Iraq Stabilization Group.”

Iraq surely paid a price for Mr. Bremer’s foot-dragging. It was clear by early 2004 that it would be impossible to pull off elections that June, when Washington had decided it did want to transfer sovereignty from the Americans to the Iraqis after all. So Ms. Rice threw something of Hail Mary pass, calling on Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian diplomat from the United Nations, to do the job that Mr. Bremer had been reluctant to tackle: i.e., name an interim government. The resulting administration of Ayad Allawi, to its credit, did see the country through to elections finally in January 2005. But it also lost those elections to what was essentially the core group of the old Governing Council.

In short, the gang that “couldn’t organize a parade” is now running the country — Mr. Talabani (now Iraq’s president), Massoud Barzani (Kurdistan regional president), Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (leader of Iraq’s largest political bloc), Ibrahim al-Jafaari (prime minister) and Mr. Chalabi (deputy prime minister). That Mr. Bremer dismissed these men as not “representative” enough to form even a caretaker administration meant that the better part of two years was lost for building post-Saddam institutions. Had Mr. Bremer allowed the country’s eventual leaders to flourish earlier, Iraq might now be doing a better job at providing basic services and ensuring its own security.

It is impossible to finish “My Year in Iraq” without thinking that President Bush might have avoided a lot of difficulty — and saved a lot of time — if he had kept in place retired Gen. Jay Garner, the civilian point-man in the invasion’s immediate aftermath. Gen. Garner knew the key figures in the Iraqi opposition and had a kind of humility that Mr. Bremer never seemed to possess. Zalmay Khalilzad, the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, had similar qualifications and might have also played a constructive role early on.

Instead, we were given Paul Bremer playing proconsul. For all his experience in the field, he failed, ultimately, to be a diplomat — to see his role as that of a facilitator more than an administrator. Perhaps a better title for his book would have been “My Lost Year in Iraq.”

Mr. Pollock is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.

Write to Robert L. Pollock at robert.pollock@wsj.com1

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