Seminar-Week 5

Bremmer-he picked the 25 members of the Iraqi interim government. Imposed ruleneo-colonial with no knowledge of country or systems. Image, that the Iraqis are running the Iraq. Iraqi face on Iraqi government as quickly as possible. Problem with this-predominantly exiles who dominated the London conference-no Sunnis. In beginning the Interim government did not have sovereignty, was advisory. The CPA was sovereign body. Paper Tiger-the Interim government council looked good, but its power was superficial. De-Baathification. Wanted to replicate 1945. Americans saving the day against an evil force and purged the region of any traces of this evil force and created a positive regional force. First thing America does is disband the civil service. Why? The cogs of the Baath party, what allowed it to function? Based on assumption that everything in Iraq would be Baathist. Decision made by Bremmer to fire 30,000 top civil servants and 300,000 top military personnel. Easier to impose a new model from the ground up. Iraq one party state. No choice but to join the party. Bremmer complete lack of foresight. Compounded own problems by getting rid of the people who had the experience to do the job. Ideological decision-sweeping away people with one ideology and putting in people with more friendly ideology. CPA. Bremmer-needed to please people back home before pleasing the Iraqis. Disbanding the army not that strange-UN been doing disarming, disbanding, reintergrating for years. The way that US did it, by putting 300,000 soldiers out of the job and not providing them with other opportunities. Creates incredible vacuum at the law, order and security level. Also puts 300,000 trained killers on the streets. Decision image-getting rid of those who previously hostile. Order 2 should have been disarm and retrain (but they had no money to do that). Failing to Plan-Planning to Fail. CPA-Baghdad centric, did not secure the outer regions.