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

  

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  Short Description for We Meant WellFrom a State Department insider, the first account of our blundering efforts to rebuild Iraq. A shocking and rollicking true-life tale of Americans abroad, and a vividly rendered tale of ineptitude and corruption.
  Full description

  • Publisher: Metropolitan Books
  • Published: 27 September 2011
  • Format: Hardback 269 pages
  • See: Full bibliographic data
  • Categories: Biography: Historical, Political & Military | Memoirs | Diplomacy | Middle Eastern History | History Of The Americas | Iraq War
  • ISBN 13: 9780805094367 ISBN 10: 0805094369
  • Sales rank: 82,216

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Full description for We Meant Well

• A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Nonfiction of 2011 titleFrom a State Department insider, the first account of our blundering efforts to rebuild Iraq--a shocking and rollicking true-life tale of Americans abroadCharged 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 cafes 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.