The Essential Bremer
BARNES, FRED
The Essential Bremer What the American administrator in Iraq has accomplished. BY FRED BARNES Baghdad IN THE BEGINNING, no American funds were to be used for the reconstruction of Iraq. It would...
...This may be Bre-mer's worst (though understandable) decision...
...The prize in this game is a free and democratic Iraq at peace at home and with its neighbors...
...Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani told Bremer disbanding the army was as important as the capture of Saddam...
...No American official of recent vintage has taken on a task on the scale of Bre-mer's...
...Bremer traveled to Washington and met one-on-one with the president before approving a new plan with transfer of sovereignty on June 30...
...This is the best example of Bremer's tactical flexibility...
...DISBANDING SADDAM'S ARMY...
...envoy Lakhdar Brahimi concluded a few months ago that a quickie election was impossible...
...One measure of Bremer's extraordinary success is that his selection has numerous fathers...
...Bush and Bremer favor a U.N...
...But he refused pleas to keep the Iraqi army intact and use it as a police and security force...
...Congress trimmed it to $18.4 billion...
...Rich Galen, an American press officer in Baghdad, calls it "MacArthur on steroids...
...Indeed it was...
...Bremer, 62, usually gets what he wants from Washington...
...it amounts to the creation not just of a government and an economy but of a country...
...Then the future of iraq will be left to iraqis...
...Bremer His most controversial decision—to disband Saddam's army—was right...
...What wasn't known was Bremer's political skill...
...Exiles like Ahmad Chalabi have no political base...
...To reconstitute it, the officers, many of them Sunnis aligned with Saddam, would have had to be called back...
...He backed down from demanding Iraqis draft a permanent constitution before the Coalition Provisional Authority, which he heads, hands over sovereignty...
...His cleverest argument was that iraq would need the U.N...
...He's relentlessly cheerful and upbeat, but serious and tough at the same time...
...Now Iraq has "an Adenauer problem...
...But Bremer was right to dismiss them...
...This was Bremer's most controversial decision...
...For all the obstacles, i think democracy will prevail...
...a loan, and won...
...Security Council approval would bestow legitimacy...
...This was a no-brainer...
...Iraqis may not be ready to rush to democracy...
...But Sistani and other Shia opposed a U.N...
...Here are a half-dozen of them: * DE-BAATHIFICATION...
...The best way to judge Bremer is to look at his most significant decisions...
...In postwar Germany, Konrad Adenauer quickly emerged as a national leader...
...When an Iraqi journalist told him he was loved by iraqis, Bremer responded, "Except for those who want to kill me...
...But privatization has essentially been left to the government elected next year...
...He asked for $5 billion to $7 billion to rebuild Iraq's crumbling and looted infrastructure...
...This was the army that brutally oppressed the Shia and Kurds...
...They are rushing to put in place before they leave on June 30 as many elements of a democracy—a securities and exchange commission, a stock market, a public broadcasting system—as they can...
...They finally did...
...THE UNITED NATIONS...
...role after U.N...
...He dropped his plan for provincial caucuses to elect an interim government that would write a permanent constitution, to be followed by the turnover of sovereignty and a democratic election...
...The reconstruction money begins flowing into Iraq this spring, with the promise of one million to two million new jobs for Iraqis and a jump-started economy...
...He has the ideal qualities...
...Ask about Bush and Bremer and every White House aide gives the same answer: "The president likes Bremer...
...Douglas Mac-Arthur had seven years to achieve in Japan what Bremer is trying to do in less than 15 months...
...He stood firm on minority rights and no islamic law while overseeing the drafting of the constitution...
...Bremer believes, however, that oil production could be doubled if the new iraqi government seeks help from private companies...
...if it does, Bremer will rightly be deemed the father of free Iraq...
...But there are limits to getting what he wants from Iraqis...
...When Sistani complained and five of the 25 members of the iraqi Governing Council balked, Bremer left it to the council to reach agreement...
...More than anyone in Washington, including Bush or Pentagon officials, he shapes policy in Iraq...
...aid to independent iraq at risk...
...SAYING NO TO PRIVATIZATION...
...And it is an ambitious policy— the creation, in Bremer's phrase, of a "new Iraq...
...So the White House swallowed hard and cut the request to $20 billion...
...This was a political breakthrough engineered by Bremer...
...THE NOVEMBER 15 AGREEMENT...
...Barring it now would put U.N...
...Certainly Falluja isn't...
...role in Iraq for the specific purposes of organizing the election and giving the new government legitimacy...
...Sistani, by the way, doesn't meet with Bremer or other coalition officials...
...Bremer yielded to political reality...
...The Baathists were Stalinists responsible for the disappearance of well over one million of their fellow Iraqis...
...Nor have the massive subsidies for gasoline, food, and energy been eliminated...
...In truth, Bremer's name was suggested to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz...
...He did and came back with a request for $22 billion...
...Despite terrorist attacks, Bremer has no regrets about that decision...
...So the prospects for full privatization are uncertain...
...The privatization of iraq's oil industry was always off the table, if only for fear that Washington would be accused of going to war for oil...
...has retreated when necessary...
...The election of a new government will be held sometime before next January 31...
...Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq had no king or Hamid Karzai to tap for leadership...
...State Department officials claim he was their pick...
...Bremer has won the support of many but not all Iraqis...
...Take another look at what's needed, Bremer was told...
...Grand Ayatollah Ali Sis-tani, the Shia leader, has political influence but doesn't want direct political power...
...But Bremer and Bush believe delay could be worse...
...Bre-mer wanted Brahimi to return and help establish an election process...
...Bremer had a strong ally on his side, President Bush...
...He's regarded by security officials as more threatened by assassins than even Bush...
...The president's confidence seems to have emboldened Bremer...
...No strong leader has stepped forward in Iraq...
...The White House was persuaded, fought against Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...But Bre-mer has effectively communicated with him since last May through intermediaries...
...Bremer was a well-known terrorism expert who'd worked for Henry Kissinger both in government and as a director of Kissinger Associates...
...on the constitution, it was Sistani who backed down...
...For one thing, the army had spontaneously dispersed in the face of the American invasion...
...THE INTERIM CONSTITUTION...
...A year after Saddam was ousted, Bremer follows a simple game plan: strategic clarity, tactical flexibility...
...Robert Blackwill, a senior National Security Council official at the White House, was dispatched to backstop Bremer, but it was Bremer who persuaded the governing council and Sistani to go along...
...Barred from serving in the new government was anyone in the top three layers of the Baath party or the top four layers of a ministry in Saddam's regime, roughly 1.5 million Iraqis...
...Besides, this was the army that had brutally oppressed the majority Shia and the minority Kurds, who would have rebelled against its return...
...And to avoid worsening unemployment, the 200 or so nationalized enterprises with 500,000 employees haven't been cut loose...
...It would be paid for, gradually, out of Iraqi oil revenues...
...In Iraq, this has been Bre-mer's most popular decision...
...Despite an $80 to $120 monthly stipend depending on their rank, some former soldiers joined what the press euphemistically calls the "insurgency" against the United States...
...Both Sistani and the appointed Iraqi Governing Council wanted sovereignty sooner...
...Exactly how Iraq arrives there is less important than getting there in a timely fashion without jeopardizing the goal itself...
...On reconstruction funding, Bremer insisted that none of it be a loan saddling a democratic Iraqi government with more debt...
...Also for political reasons, dollariz-ing the currency was rejected in favor of issuing a new currency without Saddam's picture on the bills...
...Rumsfeld sold it to Bush, who didn't know Bremer, and to others in the administration...
...Two months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, the American administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, concluded the oil plan wouldn't work...
...Bremer intends to trim the subsidies by June 30, when he leaves...
...That hasn't impeded him or the impressive staff of volunteers who've joined him in Iraq...
...The White House was shocked and said this was too much...
...That episode demonstrates Bre-mer's clout...
...later...
Vol. 9 • April 2004 • No. 30
