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Some Thoughts on Paul Bremer's "My Year in Iraq"

I am reading L. Paul Bremmer's My Year in Iraq. If we take it at face value, it explains how the Bush administration was really interested in establishing democracy in Iraq after the invasion. For instance, group of 8 exiles the US facilitated to return to Iraq were thought to be too narrow a governing body. The US wanted to expand it into a Governing Council of 25, but with a Shia majority. It "was assumed" that there should be a Shia majority because the Shia were 60 percent of the population.

The only problem with this was that it emphasizes ethnic rivalry under the name of balance. The leaders of the governing council were very much opposed to the old guard, which was completely purged in a process of de-Baathification. It was Bremer who announced this US policy, planned in Washington. It was assumed that the new Shia leaders would be enlightened and fair minded, or else that democracy itself could solve unsolvable political problems.

What chance there could have been for a political solution would have been to establish a three party council, with various delegates within each representative of each group, each of the three with veto power for the governance. Each group should have been free to choose its own leaders. Indeed, Bremer says that the exile leaders were so indecisive because they had to decide things on consensus.

Basically the US propped up one decision maker, the leader of the council, who would be favorable to US policy towards Iraq. In doing this, the US wanted to have one of the former exiles, namely, Allawi, as that leader. He basically permitted the US to wage war on the "insurgents" instead of conducting political negotiations.

Another mistake that the US made was to assume that it could get rid of the Baath party or more properly, the political influence of that political group which ruled Iraq for so many decades

The US policy in Iraq has clearly been a game of divide and conquer, or overthrowing one regime for another. The problem is that democracy is based on consensus and no proper consensus has ever been negotiated, even up until now.

US policy in Iraq has fostered violence by search and destroy and by linking the occupation to the "war on terror." Bush invited the enemy to "bring it on." He invited terrorists an Al Qaeda from other countries to come to Iraq to do battle with US troops, which they have done! This then has provided a fig leaf for justification of the continued occupation,

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