A recent article in the Washington Post previewed the forthcoming book by former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith. In his book Feith apparently alleges that I was responsible for what he calls the single biggest mistake the United States made in Iraq. He claims that I unilaterally abandoned the president’s policy, promoted by Feith and others before the war, to grant sovereignty to a group of Iraqi exiles immediately after Saddam’s defeat. On March 16, Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute elaborated on this theme, arguing that a key error was that “we did not turn to well-established and broadly representative opponents” of Saddam.
Here are the facts.
Before the war, there had been disagreements within the American government about the length of the occupation of Iraq. Some, including Feith, argued that as soon as Saddam was ousted, we should turn over sovereignty to a small group of Iraqi exiles our government had been in touch with. Others, including officials at the State Department and CIA, emphasized the deep divisions in Iraqi society caused by Saddam’s long tyranny, and suggested the U.S. would be obliged to undertake a long-term effort to put Iraq on the path to representative government. The president apparently agreed with the short-occupation version sometime in March.
But by late April, and before I was asked to return to government, doubts had arisen among top American officials about a quick handover.
At the fall of Baghdad, there were no Iraqi political leaders inside the country commanding a significant following to whom we could hand over power. In contrast to Afghanistan, no one figure was acceptable to the entire country. Thus the only choice for an early transfer of power would have been to establish an Iraqi government made up of exiles who had been leaders in the pre-war Iraqi opposition abroad. But the group of Westernized exiles the American government had worked with before and during the war was far better known to American officials than to Iraqis who had remained in Iraq (except the Kurdish leaders). The exiles’ thinking, speech, and dress were those of men who had been living in another world.
Moreover, the exile leadership group did not reflect a balance of Iraq’s population. Sunnis were hardly represented; Kurds were overrepresented. The group included no women or members of important Iraqi minorities, such as Christians and Turkomen. In sum, this group was neither “well-established” nor “broadly representative.”
In my first meeting with the president, on May 6, 2003, he made clear that his policy was to take the time necessary to create a stable political environment in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated this guidance at a meeting of the NSC principals two days later (attended by Feith). The vice president added that “we are not at the point where people we want to emerge can yet emerge.” The next day, at a full NSC meeting, after a discussion of the political process, the president said his message was “that this will take a long time.”
Whatever Feith may have made of the president’s clear guidance, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the same day circulated to NSC members a paper titled “Principles for Iraq,” in which he stated: “The transition from despotism to a democracy will not happen fast or easily. It cannot be rushed.” To underline the point, Secretary Rumsfeld sent a memo to Feith on May 21 (copied to me in Baghdad, where I had arrived on May 12 to head the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA) which said, “We need to lay a foundation for self-government. . . . We should not rush to elections.”
As we moved to implement the president’s plan, I kept Washington informed of our meetings with Iraqi political leaders. They asserted that the country needed a new constitution to give structure to post-Saddam political life. This led me to outline to Secretary Rumsfeld, on May 22, our proposed plan to move first to a constitution and then elections. The same day I forwarded through Rumsfeld my first report to the president, which reflected his guidance before I left for Iraq and which said that “full sovereignty under an Iraqi government can come after democratic elections, which themselves must be based on a constitution agreed by all the people. This process will take time.” The next day the president wrote back: “You have my full support and confidence. You also have the backing of our Administration that knows our work will take time. We will fend off the impatient . . . ”
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