We Meant WellHow I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (American Empire Project)

We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (American Empire Project)
by Peter Van Buren

Peter Van Buren

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Release Date: September 27, 2011

Buy new: $25.00 $16.50

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"In this shocking and darkly hilarious exposé of the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, former State Department team leader Van Buren describes the tragicomedy that has been American efforts at nation building, marked by bizarre decisions and wrongheaded priorities..."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"One of the rare, completely satisfying results of the expensive debacle in Iraq."—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Long after the memoirs of Bush, Rice, and Rumsfeld are in some landfill, this unsparing and  funny chronicle will remain essential to understanding America's Iraq War.
—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War

"The road to Hell is paved with taxpayer dollars in Peter Van Buren's account of a misspent year rebuilding Iraq. Abrasive, honest and funny, We Meant Well is an insider's account of life behind blast walls at the height of the surge."—Nathan Hodge, author of Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders

"If Joseph Heller's war began in 2004 instead of 1944, this would be the book entitled Catch-22. Once I picked up We Meant Well, I could not put the book down. I could not believe so much that appears to be fictional satire could instead relate actual events...Very highly recommended."—Seattle-Post Intelligencer

From a State Department insider, the first book recounting our misguided efforts to rebuild Iraq—a shocking and rollicking true-life cross between Catch-22 and The Ugly American

Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets without water or electricity?

According to Peter Van Buren, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge—that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world's largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can't rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.

Darkly funny while deadly serious, We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer—and readers—appalled and disillusioned but wiser.

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