On this day in 2003, two months after the beginning of the U.S.-led military invasion to oust President Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration decided to disband the Iraqi Army.
It was a contentious decision that has often been viewed as one of the principal causes of the rise of Islamist groups which terrorized the country for the next 15 years and led to the persecution and subsequent exodus of Iraqi Christians.
But how much was that decision really to blame, and what other factors could also have been responsible?
To try to find out and ascertain how much the Bush administration took Christian interests into consideration, I spoke May 10 with the U.S. official responsible for the decision, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, whom President George W. Bush appointed the de facto head of state of Iraq soon after the military invasion.
From May 2003 to June 2004, Bremer was administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) responsible for directing the early reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, removing Ba’ath Party personnel, and installing democratic institutions.
Bremer explains why he takes a different view regarding his so-called CPA Order 2 to disband the army, arguing that it had already disbanded when he arrived in the country. He also asserts that the Bush administration tried to ensure Iraqi Christians and all minorities entered policy considerations, but that inadequate security measures, lack of strategy, and poor leadership from the Defense Department in the early years of the war brought untold suffering to Christians and all Iraqis. He also blames the Obama administration for withdrawing U.S. troops in 2011, leaving a power vacuum filled by ISIS.
A seasoned U.S. diplomat and convert to the Catholic Church who served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands under President Ronald Reagan, Bremer, now 81, also worked closely for many years with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Ambassador Bremer, how much of the CPA’s work was concerned about the wellbeing of Iraqi Christians at the time? Were they considered an important element in policy considerations?
Yes, they were. Let me go back and put it in slightly broader context and I can get back to you more precisely. As you know, one of the problems we faced was trying to reduce the ethnic and religious differences among various Iraqis. So, there were the Arabs and the Kurds, there were then, within the Arabs, the Shia and the Sunni — the religion was particularly complicated because there was the split within the Arab world, of the Shia and the Sunnis.
And then, it was, after all, the place where Christians believe our lives began, in Syria, thousands of years ago. The Jewish records were a very sensitive subject; the Jewish community had been moving out rather rapidly after the end of the Second World War, but there still was a Jewish community and there were Jewish documents that went back hundreds of years recording what the Jewish community had done.
In my very first meeting with the people that my predecessor, Jay Garner, had been talking with — the group of seven representative Iraqis — I said to them that in looking around the table at those seven men, I noticed that there was no Christian, there were no Turkmen, and there were no women. And I said to them, that’s just unacceptable. I’ve looked back through my notes, and I went on many times to insist on a unified Iraq.
I said, “We will accept no language in laws or actions which suggest seceding from Iraq, or leading Iraq to be put on a path to civil war if there is any such laws or actions.” This was the consistent message we had overall. I took care to be sure there was a Christian on the 25-person governing council. And he served on that council for the whole 14 months that we were there. I had regular meetings with him, but also with various leaders of the Christian communities. And there was, of course, the difference between the Syriac and the Chaldean Christians. I obviously wasn’t going to enter into that discussion either.
So, what we had as an objective was to be sure that all of these various ethnic and religious communities felt engaged in the process of trying to carry out the task that President Bush had given me, which was explicitly to let the Iraqis take control of their country again, have them rebuild the economy and the political structure.
The war was already well underway when you arrived, but were Pope John Paul II’s warnings taken note of in any major way? His main concern was the Christians there and that they would be forced to leave, which is what’s happened, of course. Were his views taken seriously?
Well, yes, they were certainly taken seriously by me and by the CPA staff. It was very clear in all of the meetings, and I’ve looked back at the notes for as many as I could get my hands on in 24 hours, that it was consistent. It was not directed at the Catholic-Protestant divide any more than we were going to talk about the Sunni and Shia being able to decide how religion was addressed.
I said over and over to them, “We want a situation where all Iraqis think of themselves as Iraqis.” I told them to their face: “I don’t like to come into a meeting and have everybody say, ‘Well, I’m a Kurd, or I’m a Shia, or I’m a Chaldean.’”
We did our best to be sure that the Christians were represented in the government, which they were for the entire 14 months I was there. We had a Christian on the council. And interestingly, looking at my notes, when I brought a delegation of Iraqis to the United States to meet President Bush in January 2004, the president said in this meeting he was a man of God and he wanted to ensure that if he, as a Christian, came to Iraq, he could be free to practice his religion. So, that was the message. It was not directed at the Catholic-Protestant divide, obviously.
If we could go on to the CPA orders 1 and 2, de-Baathification and disbandment of the Iraqi army. In your book My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, you explain that disbanding the Iraqi army isn’t as clear as often people make it out to be, as many of the soldiers had already left the army when you’d arrived.
There really was no army. I have often said the mistake was using the verb “disband.” There was nothing to disband. There was no army. The question was, should we recall the old army or should we build a new army? That was our dilemma.
But do you think that the situation was precipitated by the invasion, in that it paved the way for ISIS as many believe, because even now people say the dissolution of the army led to a power vacuum?
No, that’s simply demonstrably wrong by looking at what actually happened. So, what actually happened was, we said, when I issued that order, that we were going to build a new Iraqi army, and that anybody from the old army up to the grade of colonel, including the enlisted men while they were draftees under the old army, that this is going to be a volunteer army. So, anybody up to the grade of colonel could apply for a role in the new Army. And of course, the draftees could then become enlisted if they wanted to.
And when I left Iraq, 14 months later, 60% of the officers and men in that new Iraqi army were from the old army. So, they came back, and that made the training of them easier. That army, trained by the Americans, defeated al-Qaida in Iraq. This little detail seems to get left out. al-Qaida in Iraq was defeated in 2009.
Now, it took the president to fire [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, fire Gen. William Casey [Commanding General of the coalition forces] and do the “surge” to make that happen. But al-Qaida was defeated. So, the key problem of ISIS was Obama. Obama’s decision to withdraw the American forces at the end of 2011 led directly within six months to the attack of ISIS. The biggest single mistake was made by the Obama administration. And then we had to go back. He took the troops out, and then he had to put them back in there. It was sort of a preview of what happened in Kabul a couple of years ago [when] we decided to leave Kabul.
So, it’s just factually wrong. The timeline makes very clear that the new Iraqi army that we trained, a majority made up of people from the old Army, was effective in defeating al-Qaida. ISIS was a different problem. And it was clearly provoked by the withdrawal of all the American forces.
How did you personally find security while you were there, as a Catholic?
I’m a convert. So, I’m not a cradle Catholic, but it was a bit of a dilemma for me going to church. So, early on, after things had settled down a little bit, I went with my also Catholic chief of staff and my security guys. We went to St. George’s, which is in downtown Baghdad. I can’t remember the name of the street.
It was a lovely place, a wonderful service. The priest was very happy. But after I went twice, I told my staff, “We’re putting an awful lot of people in danger by going there every Sunday at the 10:00 Mass (or whatever time it was). It’s just going to be too dangerous.” So, I basically stopped going to that. I went to the one that the Catholic chaplain attached to the military did every Sunday in the palace where we worked. So, that was a painful thing, but it certainly brought home to me the security problem.
What are your reflections as a Catholic on how Christians have suffered since the Iraq War? What in hindsight could have been done better, do you think, to minimize the persecution?
Well, I think everything comes back to security. I have spoken, written, and testified repeatedly that during the time I was there, those first 14 months, we never had sufficient troops on the ground to provide adequate security for the Iraqi people. And the troops we had on the ground never had robust rules of engagement, ROE as they call it in the military.
For example, as I wrote in my book, there was widespread unchecked looting and burning down of [government] ministries. When I arrived, Baghdad was inflamed. We had 40,000 troops in the area of Baghdad and no rules of engagement to stop the looting. Simple question, “Why did you let the looting go?” But in terms of the broader strategic problem, there were these other two points: One, we never had enough, probably we had less than half the number of troops we needed to provide security to a country of 27 million people. And we had no strategy.
The U.S. military had assumed before we went in in March of ’03 that it would be a quick in and out, 90 days there, and then we’re out. This was demonstrably wrong right away. And it never was fixed until Bush fired Casey and Rumsfeld in early 2006. So, Iraq has suffered from that. And it’s not just the Christians, it’s not even primarily the Christians, it’s pretty much all the Iraqis.
Was the Iraq War a mistake?
No, it was not a mistake to overthrow Saddam. And in the interviews I’ve done around this time, I’ve been making two points: Point one, that despite all of what we’ve seen, the Iraqis are better off now than they were before under Saddam. They have had six consecutive and free democratic elections for new governments. No other Arab country has ever done that. And they did it on the basis of a constitution, which the Iraqis wrote themselves.
Where else has that happened in the Arab world? And the economy has boomed. The per capita GDP is seven times what it was before under Saddam. So, the Iraqis, despite all of the news in the papers, they’re actually better off and they’re better ruled.
And secondly, American interests are better served despite all of this and despite the waxing authority of the Iranians. If we had left Saddam in power, we know for a fact that he would have continued his WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs, or whatever they were during the ’90s. We know from the post-war examination of the intelligence and talking to his people, he would’ve resumed his WMD. So, America would today be faced, if we hadn’t taken out Saddam, with a nuclear armed Iraq facing a nuclear armed Iran. Forget about the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement], that was never going to go anywhere anyway. And the Iranians would never sign such an agreement. So, in the long historic view, it’s hard to know how it will all settle down, if it does settle down, but I can make an argument that the Iraqis and America are better off for what we did.
But to focus on Iraqi Christians, under Saddam they enjoyed protection and near-equal rights as Muslims, and now they’re left vulnerable, many have left and are leaving. Apparently fewer than 250,000 Christians are left, compared to 1.3 million in 2003. What are your views on that, on the many Christians who have suffered?
Well, it’s a sad outcome. It’s a sad outcome. And the Jewish community has had an even more dramatic and the longer term [emigration] because the Jews there were chased away a long time ago. Now, it’s a sad outcome, but it is what it is at this point. Certainly, we pray, and my wife and I pray every night for the people of Iraq. We don’t just pray for the Catholic people of Iraq. I have to tell you, we just pray for the people of Iraq.
Some say Christians could disappear within 30 to 50 years if the international community doesn’t do anything to help them. What do you think about that?
Well, I would have no way to judge any statistics like that. It’s hard to say. I sort of am a history buff and this is not the first time that the Christian community, going back to the Syrians, back to Nineveh, it’s not the first time that there have been problems in Mesopotamia for various people. Of course, Sunnis and Shia in particular have battled each other. It certainly would be sad [if Christians disappeared], and the Jewish Iraqis have been through this as well, as I say. It’s a sad thing.
What do you think could be done to help protect Iraqi Christians in the future?
Well, I haven’t been back, and I haven’t talked to whoever, I don’t even know who the American ambassador is there now. But what I would hope is that the American government, as part of its broader effort to promote rule of law and equality, would have a program that looks at that. Not just at the Catholics, obviously, but in a more general way. Because there are a lot of minorities who are mistreated by a lot of governments. The philosophy that President Bush and I were talking about, his directions to me, were to help the Iraqis regain control over Iraq and recover the political and economic freedoms that they deserve. That should be what the American government is trying to do in various places.
And perhaps a coalition force of some kind to protect them, to keep the Christians there?
Yes, I’m sure that’s true. I couldn’t tell you what the program of work should be, but I can say that could be a good objective.
In all charity, the US government has been either at war with the Orthodox Catholic faith or attempting to subvert it with the heresy of Americanism. They have zero interest in protecting Christianity anywhere since it is a bulwark against the rampant materialism and consumption that the elites attempt to ‘drug’ and/or control the people.