Decision Points

leader who shared my conviction that the Iraqis were capable of democracy. He knew it would take time for them to write a constitution and prepare for elections. In one of our first meetings, he told me he’d read a study of previous postwar operations and thought we needed more troops in Iraq.
    I raised the question of troop levels with Don Rumsfeld and the military leadership. They assured me we had enough. They anticipated the arrival of more forces from Coalition partners and believed we could train an Iraqi army and police force fairly quickly. They were alsoconcerned about stirring up Iraqi nationalism and inciting violence by appearing to occupy the country.
    I accepted Don and the military’s judgment. The chaos and violence we witnessed was alarming, but it was still early. The situation reminded me of the difficult first days in Afghanistan. I refused to give up on our plan before it had a chance to work.
    Bremer arrived in Iraq on May 12, 2003. One of his first tasks was to assemble an Iraqi Governing Council that would take responsibility for key ministries and prepare for a formal return of sovereignty. Navigating Iraq’s tribal, religious, and ethnic politics was highly complicated. But Jerry and his team did a superb job. The Governing Council took office in July, just four months after liberation. It included twenty-five Iraqis from all backgrounds. Iraqis still had a long way to go, but they had taken their first step toward a representative government.
    Forming the Governing Council was an important way to demonstrate that Saddam’s tyranny was gone forever. With that in mind, Jerry issued two orders shortly after his arrival in Baghdad. One declared that certain members of Saddam’s Baath Party would not be eligible to serve in the new government of Iraq. The other formally disbanded the Iraqi army, which had largely disappeared on its own.
    In some ways, the orders achieved their objectives. Iraq’s Shia and Kurds—the majority of the population—welcomed the clean break from Saddam. But the orders had a psychological impact I did not foresee. Many Sunnis took them as a signal they would have no place in Iraq’s future. This was especially dangerous in the case of the army. Thousands of armed men had just been told they were not wanted. Instead of signing up for the new military, many joined the insurgency .
    In retrospect, I should have insisted on more debate on Jerry’s orders, especially on what message disbanding the army would send and how many Sunnis the de-Baathification would affect. Overseen by longtime exile Ahmed Chalabi , the de-Baathification program turned out to cut much deeper than we expected, including mid-level party members like teachers. It is possible we would have issued the orders anyway. They were tough calls, and any alternative would have created a separate set of problems. Had the Shia concluded that we were not serious about ending the era of the Baath Party, they may have turned against the coalition,rejected the goal of a unified Iraqi democracy, and aligned themselves with Iran. There is no way to know for sure what would have happened, but the discussion would have better prepared us for what followed.

    The security situation continued to deteriorate over the summer. Iraq was becoming a magnet for extremists—Baathist insurgents, Fedayeen Saddam, foreign terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda, and, later, militant Shia and agents of Iran. These groups had different ideologies, but they shared an immediate goal: to drive America out of Iraq. They knew they could never win a direct fight against our troops, so they deployed roadside bombs and attacked nonmilitary targets such as the Jordanian embassy and the UN complex in Baghdad. Another tactic was to kidnap reconstruction workers and execute them in grisly Internet videos. Their strategy was to present an image of Iraq as hopeless and unwinnable, swinging American public opinion against the war and forcing us to withdraw as we had in Vietnam.
    To an extent, they succeeded. It was difficult for the average American to differentiate the twisted terrorists from the millions of ordinary Iraqis who were grateful for liberation. We tried to get the good news out—the relative calm in the Kurdish north and Shia south, the rebuilding of schools and hospitals, and the training of a new Iraqi army. But in the eyes of the media—and, therefore, of the public—none of this quiet progress could compete with the