We Meant Well (0805096817)

"One diplomat's darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and State Department have done--or tried to do--since the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all."--The New York Times

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 that lack water and electricity?

As Peter Van Buren shows, 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.

A work of "scathing, gallows humor" (The Boston Globe), We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer--and readers--appalled and disillusioned, but wiser.

Product details

• Format Paperback | 269 pages
• Dimensions 141 x 210 x 20mm | 259g
• Publication date 21 Aug 2012
• Publisher St. Martins Press-3PL
• Publication City/Country New York, United States
• Language English
• ISBN10 0805096817
• ISBN13 9780805096811
• Bestsellers rank 532,971

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