PAUL BREMER, the new civilian administrator of Iraq, arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, May 11. The same day, the front page of the Washington Post announced that Barbara Bodine, an American diplomat in charge of postwar Baghdad, would be leaving. On May 13, the controversial interim health minister, a man with deep ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, quit his post under pressure after just 10 days. The next day, the Pentagon announced that 15,000 more U.S. troops would head to Iraq to restore order. By Thursday, Iraqis were told that possessing or selling guns was grounds for arrest, and a long-overdue de-Baathification policy had been put in place. And on Friday, Bremer announced that between 15,000 and 30,000 Saddam sympathizers would be ineligible for any role in the new Iraqi government. In the weeks since the fall of Baghdad, as prominent Shia clerics won the attention of news cameras and reporters by holding rallies and calling for American troops to leave Iraq, many of their countrymen, including those cooperating with coalition reconstruction efforts, have been quietly urging a stronger American presence. In Bremer, they got it.
Bremer is a career State Department official who has served six secretaries of state over 23 years. In 1989, he headed a task force on counterterrorism for President Reagan. Following his service in government, Bremer worked for Henry Kissinger’s consulting firm.
To say that Bremer comes as a no-nonsense administrator doesn’t begin to capture his single-minded determination to effect a smooth and relatively quick transition from U.S. occupation to Iraqi self-rule. He has already shown a willingness to dispense with the ego-massaging and faction-appeasing that can prove lethal to such a huge project–and that’s just inside the Bush administration. Those who have worked with Bremer in the brief time since he was named say he has a blunt, sometimes brusque manner, with an emphasis on results over discussion. “He’s not at all afraid to piss people off,” says one Defense official.
The Pentagon had plans to bring in a civilian administrator well before the war began. Retired general Jay Garner was chosen to lead the immediate U.S. postwar effort because of his successful stewardship of Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq following the first Gulf War. But his role was primarily a practical one. “Garner was always the trains-run-on-time guy,” says a Pentagon official.
Some on the Bush administration’s national security team had hoped that Garner would “rise to the occasion” and handle some political aspects of reconstruction. But he repeatedly made clear his strong preference for leaving that work to others, chiefly presidential envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.
Khalilzad is credited with a successful political transition following the war in Afghanistan. But Iraq is not Afghanistan, and several administration sources say that the Afghan model Khalilzad tried to apply, with its heavy reliance on tribal leaders, was ill-suited to the political realities of Iraq.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, these sources say, U.S. planners were intent on listening to Iraqis’ ideas about democracy. A certain amount of consultation, of course, is important. The Iraqis, after all, know their country. But too much listening can be paralyzing. When Iraqi leaders gathered on April 28 in Baghdad for the second governance conference, they demanded a plan. Khalilzad failed to share one, and, despite assurances offered by other Americans in attendance, some of the Iraqis left the gathering deeply concerned.
To make matters worse, Barbara Bodine and others in the postwar operation seemed to have a soft spot for former Baath party members. When U.S. administrators named Ali Shnan al-Janabi as the interim head of the Ministry of Health, Iraqi doctors took to the streets in protest. Although he had been the third-ranking official in that ministry under Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials noted that some regarded him as a “respected and courageous doctor and administrator.” That was not the message long-suffering Iraqis wanted to hear.
Such American missteps, coming after U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during his war against Iran in the 1980s and the U.S. refusal to remove Saddam in 1991 after the Gulf War, only confirm conspiracy theories about American sympathy for the Baath party. The inclusion of high-ranking Baathists in postwar administration has fueled those concerns.
Bremer sought to ease those anxieties at a press conference in Baghdad on Thursday. Inaugurating the era of the stern father, after Bodine and Khalilzad’s permissive-mother regime, Bremer said, “We are determined that Baathists and Saddamism will not come back to Iraq.”
Bremer’s appointment was a rare Washington event: It seemed at first to please everyone. Diplomats at the State Department quickly phoned friendly journalists and declared Bremer’s selection a win for Colin Powell and the Foggy Bottom crowd. Bremer had worked at the State Department for nearly a quarter century, they explained, and would bring to the job the sophistication of a career foreign service officer and the temperament of a civil servant who understands that the world is gray.
“The choice of Mr. Bremer is a victory for the State Department over the Pentagon,” reported Stephen Weisman in the May 2, 2003, New York Times, “and comes after weeks of what many officials say has been a sharp dispute between the two agencies. . . . The decision has been tightly held. Some administration officials were so concerned that the move not look like a setback for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that they were considering having him announce it upon his return from Baghdad on Friday night, to make it look like a Pentagon initiative.”
Not exactly. According to sources at both the State Department and the Pentagon, Bremer was the Pentagon’s choice, made in close consultation with Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Bremer reports directly to Rumsfeld. That reality has some folks at the State Department grumbling. One official described the reaction at Foggy Bottom as one of “surprise,” adding, “Bremer’s selection ‘pleased everyone who wants to see this transition succeed.'” Bremer has been warning about the terrorist threat from al Qaeda for years, and Pentagon officials say he appreciates President Bush’s forward-leaning, good-versus-evil understanding of the potential threats.
The Pentagon has set as Bremer’s top priorities security/stability and de-Baathification. Progress on both fronts will be crucial to gaining the trust of Iraqis and moving forward with a political agenda, something Bremer has said he hopes to do quickly.
“The coalition will work to provide the conditions for Iraqis to govern themselves in the future,” he said on Thursday. “To that end, the Coalition Provisional Authority will work with responsible Iraqis to begin the process of establishing a government representative of all Iraqi people.”
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
