CODEPENDENT NO MORE

Overseer Adjusts Strategy as Turmoil Grows in Iraq: L. Paul Bremer III now realizes he needs an Iraqi governing body to share responsibility - or blame - for the long-term task of establishing postwar order and stability. (PATRICK E. TYLER, 7/13/03, NY Times)

In selecting Mr. Bremer for the job of winning the peace in a country that has known only iron-fisted totalitarian rule for a quarter-century, Mr. Bush settled on the candidate who appears, up to now, to have straddled the ideological divide between the State Department and Pentagon over the kind of crisis management needed to protect the allied victory here.

To Pentagon conservatives, Mr. Bremer has strong credentials as the tough counterterrorism chief in the Reagan administration and as a longtime prot?g? of Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state. With Mr. Bremer's 23-year career as a diplomat, his conservatism is leavened with a strong pragmatic instinct.

"As forceful as he is, he certainly is not dogmatic," said S?rgio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special representative in Baghdad.

Barham Salih, a senior aide to another Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, said: "He came with some very definite ideas on what needed to be done," adding that Mr. Bremer "believed that Iraq needed to be rebuilt along free-market principles."

Mr. Salih said Mr. Bremer initially resisted a more nuanced assessment.

"I told him that Iraq is a welfare state and its government is dependent on oil revenues and the people have gotten used to be given handouts," Mr. Salih said. "I told him it would be disastrous policy if he is thinking of ending the welfare state overnight."

The reason things like the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan failed was because we allowed them to keep their social welfare states intact, guaranteeing that recovery would be only mild and temporary. Let's not make the same mistake in Iraq.

MORE:
-The Road Ahead in Iraq - and How to Navigate It: The creation of a governing council is the first step in the political transition of Iraq. (L. PAUL BREMER III, 7/13/03, NY Times) Posted by Orrin Judd at July 13, 2003 6:06 AM