The Washington Post Bremer's Legacy By Jim Hoagland Thursday, May 6, 2004 Events, interlopers and policy mistakes have taken substantial power from the hands of L. Paul Bremer III in his final two months as President Bush's proconsul in Baghdad. More timid souls would serve out their time in quiet, bitter frustration. But the creeping marginalization he faces actually gives the strong-willed Bremer a large measure of freedom. With little to lose in terms of operational power, he is more free to speak out and salvage something from his original hopes of pointing post-Baathist Iraq toward constitutional democracy and stability.
Those goals seemed to grow more distant through the cruel and bloody month of April. They are still attainable. But they are endangered by a recent wavering in U.S. commitment and strategy brought to the surface last weekend by the decision to enlist a notorious Baathist ex-general to help restore "order" in Fallujah. This action went directly against the spirit and letter of Bremer's de-Baathification policy, which is under attack in the Bush administration. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, who commanded units that mounted pogroms against Kurds and Iraqi Shiites in the 1990s, was reportedly brought to U.S. commanders in Fallujah by CIA operatives who are forming Iraq's new intelligence service. The appointment, which has since been withdrawn, was made without Bremer's knowledge and was not cleared at the Pentagon. It is hard to think of a gesture that could more effectively undermine the moral claims the Bush administration made in justifying regime change in Iraq -- especially as it came when legitimate outrage and revulsion was spreading globally over evidence of abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Saleh's brief appointment was a manifestation of the campaign to rehabilitate Baathist military commanders, political figures and civil servants as a way of buying calm in the rebellious Sunni heartland. That approach is a longtime favorite of the CIA and the former Iraqi army and intelligence officers the agency has helped push into command of the secret service it is building in Baghdad. Bremer has taken to the sidelines as U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been given free rein by the White House to choose and install an interim cabinet of Iraqi technocrats when the occupation symbolically ends June 30 and Bremer leaves for home. Brahimi has made the overturning of Bremer's de-Baathification policy -- the U.S. administrator's most important political achievement -- an important goal. But Bremer still has time to shape events and to share the hard truths about Iraq not only with the U.S. representatives who will follow him but also with an American nation that has begun to wonder if the Bush administration knows what it is doing in Iraq. Bremer's fate since being rushed to Baghdad last summer to run the Coalition Provisional Authority mirrors in many ways the troubled arc of the U.S. occupation. He has come to personify America's good intentions, brash attitudes and manifest shortcomings in Iraq. Bremer began with an unshakable self-confidence that helped stem a slide to disorder in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. But the cocksureness of 2003 allowed no space for advice or criticism from others. Reluctant to turn over real authority, even to his own U.S. or British aides, Bremer also disparaged the Iraqi politicians he appointed to the Governing Council. They were quick to return the favor. He was forced to abandon a complex caucus election plan when Shiites rebelled. His bid for a legacy of relative stability went up in flames in Fallujah and Najaf, where revolts consumed the Iraqi security units created on Bremer's watch. In the last ignominy, he had to go on television to criticize aspects of his own de-Baathification policy. His demeanor suggested he had been ordered to say things he didn't believe. In recent months Bremer's power has shrunk steadily as coordination of the occupation in Washington shifted from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who let Bremer run the show, to the White House, which is focused on the presidential election. U.N. involvement in the person of Brahimi has been useful in preempting or countering criticism from Democrats on the campaign trail. Bremer helped create his descent. He "is a control freak," says a former U.S. official who is one of his greatest admirers. "Put him in a hierarchy, and he will bend it to your needs and purposes. But the formlessness of that society and the necessary ambiguities people practice to survive there must be driving him crazy.'' Like many proconsuls dispatched to the Third World before him, Bremer pursued an illusion of control in circumstances that permitted no such thing. He will have done so relentlessly, but fruitlessly, if he loses on de-Baathification. Bremer cannot burnish his stellar reputation by leaving Iraq saying that it all worked out fine. History and the immediate future demand his candor and his renewed commitment to keeping the murderers and torturers from regaining power.
