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We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose The Battle For The Hearts And Minds Of The Iraqi People (2011)

by Peter Van Buren(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0805094369 (ISBN13: 9780805094367)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Metropolitan Books

review 1: Really more of a 3 1/2 star book: a somewhat disconnected look at the State Department's role in "rebuilding" Iraq in 2007-2010, when our government poured billions and billions into ill-thought out programs and mostly put utter incompetents in charge of carrying them out. Many parts are laugh-out-loud funny (or, maybe not, depending on how you feel about your tax dollars utterly wasted). There's no real overarching theme or analysis except complete incompetence at the hands of our government. It's clear few if any nation building lessons were learned from Vietnam, even if we did learn combat lessons. Still, recommended as one of the first generation of books revealing what a debacle Iraq War II was.
review 2: Mr. Van Buren porvides a human perspective of the U... morenited States reconstruction efforts in Iraq. He highlights the waste and inconsistencies of the governments effort's there. It would be an extremely depressing book if not for Van Buren's humorous presentation of different situations and his mockery of official policies. From this humor, it is easy to see just how jaded the author is about the whole experience. This might have been the weakest aspect of the book. Van Buren's extreme cynicism makes you question his objectivity and the facts around the situations he described. I never doubted the basic facts of his stories, but I wondered if he warped details out of frustration and to keep the audience laughing. less

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