Global Policy Forum

A veteran US diplomat who served as a government adviser in Iraq says US policy in the country at the initial stage of the occupation was driven by neoconservative ideology rather than careful preparation and clear understanding of issues.

Ambassador Robin Raphel, who has been with the foreign service since 1977 and once served as assistant secretary of state, delivered her unusually candid remarks in a July 2004 interview for a relatively obscure history program at the US Institute of Peace. It has remained unnoticed until now, when increasing numbers of Americans began to question the Bush administration's involvement in Iraq.

Raphel, who served as a trade adviser to the Iraqi government from April to August 2003, took particular issue with decisions by then administrator Paul Bremer to launch debaathification of the country and disband Saddam Hussein's military.

"What one needs to understand is that these decisions were ideologically based," the diplomat argued. "They were not based on an analytical, historical understanding. They were based on ideology. You don't counter ideology with logic or experience or analysis very effectively." She said political pressure on professional foreign service officers was "huge" and "pervasive."

"The ideology was what has come to be called neoconservatism and the whole belief that this would be an easy war, that we would be welcomed with open arms," Raphel pointed out. She insisted this view was cultivated by expatriate Iraqis, who had their own agenda, which they tried to impose on US officials.

Raphel said it became quickly obvious to her that the United States could not run a country that Americans did not understand. "We were a bunch of amateurs largely except for the engineers, and even they didn't have a professional means to interface with the Iraqis, so they were missing," she said. "There was very much the sense that we were getting in way over our heads within weeks."

The US diplomat said she believed the administration of President George W. Bush went into Iraq too soon and it should have waited until the United States was able to build an international coalition.

"But there were two pressures," she insisted. "One was the clear political pressure, election driven and calendar driven. And the other was, the troops were deployed forward for Afghanistan and to let that kind of fall back and then reenergize everybody is very difficult."

But according to Raphel, it was difficult for professional diplomats to express their views because of the administration's ideological enforcers present in the country. "Oh, yes, there were political people round and about," she recalled. "One had to be careful."