Students flocked to Memorial Audito­rium on April 19th to hear Ambassador L. Paul Bremer reflect on his experi­ence as the Administrator of the Coali­tion Provisional Authority in Iraq . Bremer spent fourteen months, from May 6, 2003 to June 28, 2004, restoring the economy, developing a democratic political system, and dealing with con­stant and varied security threats. The contents of Bremer’s speech to the Stanford community were off the record because he is currently writ­ing a book on his experiences in Iraq , but he granted an exclusive interview to The Stanford Review, The Stanford Report, and The Stanford Progressive before the event. The following are his insights into the struggle which may be remembered in future years as the birth of Middle Eastern democracy.

Q (Review): A major story like the Iraqi elections is widely reported, but Americans hear very little about other success stories in Iraq . Do you think that there are such ongoing successes?

A (Bremer): It was a major frustration of ours…during the 14 months that I was there, we completed over 20,000 individual reconstruction projects, which comes down to about 45 a day, seven days a week, for fourteen months. A lot of them were small, they’re not all big projects, but they’re the kind of projects that make a real difference in somebody’s life (rebuilding a school, or something like that)--and they did not get reported. It’s interesting: if you talk to somebody who was in communication with someone in Iraq , either in the military or a civilian, they were getting e-mails, they would know a lot about it. But it was not getting picked up in the regular press. And it was a lot of good news.

Q (Report): You said that you were hopeful about the future of Iraq —and yet a lot of the news that we hear is not positive—how would you reconcile this?

A (Bremer): I think a lot of people are not paying attention to the good news. Just look what’s happened in the last two months. They’ve held the first free elections in Iraq ’s history. Almost nine million people went out and voted—that’s 60 percent, more than we get in our presidential elec­tions, and they went out at a time when they were saying, “We’ll kill you if you vote”. They’ve now got the first elected president in Iraq , and he’s a Kurd, he’s not even an Arab. He’s the first non-Arab president in an Arab country. They’ve got a Parlia­ment which exceeded the target of 25% of the Parliament being women--it’s actually 31%. It’s one of the highest percents anywhere in the world, and by the way, twice the percent in the American Congress. There’s a lot of good news.

The forces that are fighting the Iraqi people are anti-democratic. So it should be no surprise whatsoever that as democracy takes hold of Iraq , they get more desperate, and they’re going to continue to attack. The Iraqis will write a Constitution this year and there’ll be a referendum on that, and that will be another election. Then they will hold elections in December, for a full-term Parliament, and that will be another election then. The anti-democratic forces, you have to expect, know that they’re losing the political battle, so they’ll continue the violence. But it’s not going to stop things. The violence is less than it was before; it’s actually about half what it was before the elections, so the violence itself is also going down.

Q (Report): What do you think of your decision to disband the Iraqi army?

A (Bremer): I think that that’s probably the most important decision I made, and it had the effect of avoiding a civil war in Iraq . It was a very important decision…it saved many, many lives.

Q (Review): In Iraq , at this point, what measures do you think it will take to defeat or at least to minimize terrorism in Iraq ?

A (Bremer): Well, what has to happen is--you can define it sort of conceptually. Two lines have to cross, the number of incidents has to decline, and even more importantly, the capability of the Iraqi security forces themselves has to increase. At some point the lines cross--and it’s a conceptual matter, it’s not tidy, you can’t measure it--but at some point the Iraqi forces become capable of carrying out the defense on their own, and when that happens it’s likely that the Iraqis will feel enough confidence that they’ll be able to ask for some of the foreign troops to go home. In order for all of that to happen, you’ve got to continue training special Iraqi security forces--that’s the key.

Q (Progressive): Do you see the policy enacted in Iraq as a model for American foreign policy?

A (Bremer): I don’t think you can do foreign policy by cookie-cutter measures. Today in Springfield , when the president opened the Lincoln Library, he said, “Americans do not assert that we have the right to impose our system of government on other countries. And I agree with that. But he did say it’s in our interest to help spread the cause of freedom and self-government, and I agree with that. Hopefully, you can lead that without using military force. They’re already talking about amazing changes going on in the region after the Iraqi elections--good changes, which so far have not required the use of military force, so I don’t think you can say that there’s any one model that you use, you just have to look each situation on its own.

Q (Report): Why did it seem like the military was not prepared for these guerilla cells?

A (Bremer): You know, I don’t know the answer to that. I think it took awhile for the insurgency to really reveal itself. When I look back on it, the real violence started in August with the bomb attacks, particularly on the U.N. and then the big one in Najaf, the holy city. We subsequently learned, although we didn’t know it at that time, that it was done by al-Qaeda, by Zarqawi, and you’ll see later on that he continues to take credit for it in his statements. At about that time, you started to see the attacks by the Saddam loyalists also picking up. We also faced something I think people did not appreciate the seriousness of – which was the fact that Saddam, you may remember, opened his prisons, and let all of his prisoners out. People estimated something like 80 to 100,000 convicted murderers and rapists and burglars. And … we didn’t have a pro­fessional police force. These guys are basically out there committing a lot of street crime, and they’re up for hire. They will do attacks and things for one of the other two [groups – terrorists and Saddam loyalists]. So it’s sort of three different groups and they’ve sort of come together. I don’t believe that they’re tactically coordinating things, but they have all in common that they don’t like the future of Iraq as a democratic country. The prisoners were released before the war. [Saddam] basically opened all the prisons. The estimates from our government were between 80 and 120,000. Now, some number of those must have been what we would think of as political prisoners, so it was 120,000 minus some number, but it’s a big number. Whatever it is, it’s a very big number. It’s a huge number of prisoners.

Q (Review): For Iraqis living in what used to be the autonomous Kurd­ish zone, it seems like incorporation into the unified Iraq might dilute their political power. What are the advantages to the Kurds of becoming part of the unified democracy?

A (Bremer): It’s a good question. The Kurds had to be persuaded that their interests lay with a unified Iraq . And I think that it’s a credit to their leaders--Mr. Talabani, who’s now the president, and Mr. Barzani, who’s heading up the Kurdish regional party. I think, frankly, they made this calculation. First of all, they were delighted that we had said we would build a new army and respect their wishes, and we were not going to reconstitute the old army, because the old army had been used to crush Kurds for 50 years. Secondly, I think they probably made the calcula­tion that if they should take a different path, the only different path would be to declare independence, [and] that this would provoke a civil war in Iraq . But more importantly, it would provoke intervention from two of the neigh­bors— Iran and Turkey —which both have large Kurdish populations. So as attractive as the general concept might be, the idea of being at war with three or four neighbors didn’t work. And the way that was resolved in the constitu­tion was to give them very substantial continued authority over their area and over the resources in their area. Now, those issues will come back when they renegotiate the constitution.

Q (Progressive): Is the threat of a civil war in Iraq today still a major concern?

A (Bremer): I don’t think the chances of a civil war are very high. Largely because I think the groups have decided that they want to live together and work together in a new Iraq , and par­ticularly the Kurds. Now the Kurds are going to have to negotiate this new constitution, and there’ll be a lot of problems. It’ll be hard, because we did it for three months. It’ll be hard, but I think they’ll find their way through that. I don’t consider a civil war very likely, frankly. And I think that prob­ably reflects the view of the administration, though again, I don’t speak for the administration.