PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCES BREMER
Whatever Happened To ...
... the former U.S. envoy to Iraq
by Kathleen hom in May 2003, L. Paul Bremer was catapulted into the spotlight as the presidential appointee chosen to oversee the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Bremer, who had been a longtime
diplomat, led the reconstruction efforts of the divided country for more than a year until he handed power to the Iraqi interim government in 2004. Critics picked apart many of his decisions, particularly the early move to disband the country’s old military, which was cited as helping to feed the insurgency. But Bremer defended his decision in his 2006 book, “My Year in Iraq.” Now 68, Bremer says of his tenure:
“Given the resources we had, which were never enough, and that planning for the postwar period turned out to be less than adequate, I think, on the whole, we did the best we could.” He lives in Chevy Chase, speaks
around the world, and in July finished a bike ride from San Francisco to Virginia Beach with 17 other cyclists, including veterans wounded in the Iraq and
the group biked an average of 70 miles a day for nearly two months during the coast-to-coast trip. When he is not biking or painting
landscapes during his Vermont vacations, Bremer is working on language translation software as board chairman of AppTek in McLean since 2007. “It was impossible for human translators to give me a summary of what the 100 [Iraqi] newspapers were saying every morning,” he recalls of his time in Iraq. It also was difficult to trust some of the translators brought into the government. Bremer has remained in contact
L. Paul Bremer has joined the board of a nonprofit that organizes cycling trips with veterans.
Afghanistan wars. “It was pretty hard for me to do as an able-bodied person,” says Bremer, who used to compete in triathlons and marathons. “We just had a tremendous reception from local communities, especially in the Midwest. People came out to set up water stations for us or just wave the flag.” Bremer had been so impressed by
soldiers he met in Iraq that last year he joined the board of World T.E.A.M. Sports, the Colorado-based nonprofit that led the trip. He rode four to five hours a day in the spring to train, and
with friends in Iraq and would like to show his wife, Frances, the country someday, but with Osama bin Laden calling for his head, Bremer says, it is not safe for him to return. But the former envoy is optimistic. “They’ve shown, by turning out for something like five elections since 2005, a real interest in representative government,” he says. “Of course, they’re having difficulty but … in the long run, it’ll settle down.”
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(Continued from Page 9)
when she saw it. And because she had the eye, our home, in my view, was a place of artistic expression and warmth. When I did my fieldwork, in Liberia,
it was all around me — I couldn’t escape art. I couldn’t help but see that when women were combing their own hair or the hair of their children, it wasn’t just a carved comb; somehow it had been embellished. It had been made to tickle aesthetic sensibilities. A spoon or a bowl to serve rice somehow became not only a utilitarian object, but it became something for one’s eyes to feast on, so the fieldwork sure did
ANSWER Ford’s Theatre
feed my interest in art. African art has been on a
journey. Go back as far as the days of colonialism: African art was being viewed by many missionaries as expressions of the devil, as, well, what would you expect of a savage people. [Later,] African art was fundamentally being viewed as art that influenced European art. But it is today that we are able to appreciate African art within the context of the continent itself. There are times when I am in
the gallery, and you can literally see on someone’s face that moment of understanding, that moment that says, “This extraordinary, exquisite work of art could not have been done by a people who have been labeled uncivilized. This
10 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | september 19, 2010
is a work of art by a people who are and deserve to be seen like all people.” Yesterday, as I was leaving the museum, there were two African American women sitting on a bench, and they stopped me. One woman said, “Aren’t you the president of Spelman College?” And I said I used to be. [I asked,] “Have you been in the
museum? Did you like it? How do you feel?” The other woman said, “I feel proud. “ I hope that not only African American women, but that people of all genders, races, sexual orientations, ages, religions, nationalities, will experience what is here and then say, “I felt proud.” We have art of the continent that birthed humanity. This is a place for everyone.
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