| Thursday,
January 19, 2006 From Aleta:
Subject: bring a hankie
http://www.iwo.com/heroes.htm
This is wonderful. A.
Bring several. You'll need them.
================================
Bremer's Diary
I have been reading Paul Bremer's book on his time in Iraq, and I didn't
need more than five pages to know what went wrong. Not in detail, perhaps,
but from the first five pages any rational person could have predicted
disaster; and the fact that Bremer still doesn't know that says many
volumes.
Bremer didn't know he was going to Iraq until a few days before he left.
He had never been in Baghdad, or in Iraq for that matter. He had been to
Afghanistan.
He had never met the President, whose viceroy he was to become. His first
meeting with the President was memorable: about twenty words passed between
them. Clearly Bremer had been recommended, and Bush had taken the
recommendation, and wasn't terribly interested in talking with our new
proconsul, or the details of the operation.
Bush asked why Bremer would want to go to Iraq. His reply is significant:
"Because I believe America has done something great in liberating Iraq, sir.
And because I think I can help."
That was the end of the interview, except that Bremer did tell the
President that Mrs. Bremer had been impressed by Bush's speech in which he
said "Freedom is not America's gift to the world. It is God's gift to
mankind."
Bremer had no team. He chose his chief of staff because one of Cheney's
people wanted the job and arranged to meet him at the copy machine outside
Cheney's office. His military advisor had been assigned t0 him by someone
else. He chose his other staff on the basis of friendship and the fact that
they had come up through the Foreign Service. All through the early chapters
you see that Bremer, like most FSO's, believe that a career in the Foreign
Service fits you to do anything.
So. With no plans, no experience in military government, no experience in
military affairs, but with supreme confidence in his management skills and
those of his Foreign Service colleagues, our proconsul set out for Iraq.
Democracy would be America's gift to Iraq. God had given it to us, and it is
our mission to spread freedom and democracy through the world.
Jacobinism is the term we use for this kind of hubris, this supreme
arrogance, this utter conviction that the world works in a certain way, and
deep down inside every human heart burns a desire for freedom and justice.
There is no Original Sin, and there is certainly no burning desire for
revenge, or plunder, or to covet thy neighbor's goods, or thy neighbor's
wife. We have only to tour through the area smiting the bad guys and the
good guys will emerge, take over, establish liberal democracy and freedom,
and we can negotiate our "legitimate disputes" with them. And all is well,
and all will be well, per omnia secula seculorum, amen.
If someone were to write a novel in which such characters appeared, it
would probably be dismissed as absurd. But this is no novel. This is the
account of the American Viceroy of Iraq during his year of disaster. He
understood little going in, and apparently understands less now.
It gets worse. Read his account of his first meetings with the Iraqis,
almost all exiles, and his idea of "putting down the hammer" and being firm
with these people.
O God, O Ottowa. And this was our proconsul, the best we breed, the best
and the brightest, sent to govern a country he had never visited.
Reviewers tell me that this book tells all you need to know about what
went wrong. Alas, it doesn't tell what to do, because Bremer never knew what
to do.
Having said that, I have to emphasize that I have not finished the book;
but from the first chapter you can infer all I have said above. Now I will
go through it all, painful as it will be; but the sheer Jacobin arrogance
shines through from the first page.
Thursday TOP
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