Military Olympians

U.S. diplomat in China to watch nephew pentathlete

BEIJING—Seated in the front rows of the Fencing Hall Thursday morning, former U.S. diplomat Paul Bremer took in the first two events as his nephew competed in the modern pentathlon.

Bremer, best known for being the U.S. government's top civilian authority in Iraq in 2004-04, arrived in Beijing Tuesday specifically to watch Eli Bremer compete.

A member of the U.S. Air Force World Class Athlete Program, Eli Bremer ranked next-to-last in a field of 36 after the shooting and fencing competition, the first two of the event's five disciplines.

"He had a couple of disappointing rounds his first two, but that's what we kind of expected," Paul Bremer said of his nephew, who is an Air Force captain. "He's very, very strong in the swim and the (3,000-meter) run, so we'll see. He'll do well in the swim and he's going to be a great runner, and we'll just have to see how the (equestrian) riding goes."

As his uncle predicted, Eli finished seventh in the 200-meter freestyle swim. However, that result only improved his overall position to 34th. The final two stages were scheduled for the evening.

This is the first time Paul Bremer has attended the Olympics. Asked about the controversy of holding the games in China, specifically regarding China's human rights record, Bremer was philosophical.

"You know, I think China is a great power, and we'll certainly have problems with them in the years ahead," he said. "You can't deny that. So, they probably should have had their opportunity. We've got a lot of problems with this country, and managing this relationship is going to be one of the really great challenges over the next 20 or 30 years."

Asked about the impact the Beijing Games will have on both China and the West, Bremer said the answer won't be know for a while.

"China is a very big country, and I think the impact will take years for us to understand, actually. It's hard to say what the impact will be, but it certainly has required the Chinese to open up more than perhaps they had opened before, and it certainly allows a lot of Westerners who might not have ever been to China to come see China, so we'll see. It's an open question."

Bremer is especially pleased that Iraq has a delegation in China. From May 2003-June 2004, he was director of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance for post-war Iraq.

"It's very moving to me," he said, "because one of the very first things I did when I got to Iraq was set up a committee to try to get the Iraqis accepted back into the Olympic movement. They'd been expelled under Saddam Hussein. It required us to entirely change the entire organization of sports, because the sports were under Uday Hussein, Saddam's sadistic son.

"We had to run over 500 elections in all the sports from the village to the municipal provincial levels, and they got accepted into the Athens Olympics. It was a very moving moment for us who worked on it when they marched in in 2004."

Regarding the state of Iraq five years into the U.S.-led occupation, Bremer, who is now working in the private sector, said, "Well, I've been all along an optimist about Iraq. I've all along said it's going to take time.

"We finally have got now the right military strategy in place and the troops to support it, and it's been very clear the last year that that has made a big difference, so I'm optimistic. I think it's going to turn out OK, we just have to be patient."

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Helene St. James writes for the Detroit Free Press.