Bremer knew people would be upset about losing their jobs, but as his memoir makes clear, he did not consider how the sudden amputation of Iraq’s professional class would make it impossible for the Iraqi state to function and therefore hinder his own work. That blindness had little to do with anti-Saddamism and everything to do with free-market fervor. Only someone deeply inclined to see government purely as a burden and public sector workers as dead wood could have made the choices Bremer did.
