Scott Horton Interviews Peter Van Buren
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Peter Van Buren, former State Department Foreign Service Officer in Iraq, discusses his tomdispatch article “How Not to Withdraw from Iraq;” failing to win hearts and minds in Iraq, despite good intentions; how goodwill infrastructure projects like building schools and drinking water facilities were squandered in a money pit of graft and fraud; Hillary Clinton’s chance to play commander in chief of her own State Department mercenary army; and the two very different tiers of mercenaries (low-paid cannon fodder from Uganda and Peru, and high-paid bullies from America, Britain and S. Africa).
MP3 here. (21:42)
Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq as a State Department Foreign Service Officer serving as Team Leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog, We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, will be published this September.
guest
June 11th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
There may be a lot of people with good intentions involved in this Iraq venture, but they are being deceived by the people running the show. Let's get real – the people who lied us into the Iraq war weren't doing it out of their zeal to uplift the Iraqi masses. The did it for oil, Israel, Wall Street and short term profits.
eCAHNomics
June 11th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Boy, was this guy naive. They're among the worst.
Roger Lafontaine
June 11th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Well I don't quite believe it either. Sure some people were naive and perhaps even well-intentioned – although I think American vanity good intentions, not pure good intentions, but the people who rigged this game knew what they were doing, knew they were lying and used all kinds of dirty tricks to get the job done. Americans are naive that is true, but it's the naivete of the powerful. The reason the naivete is there is because that same naivete has always, up to now, benefited the American economy. It goes like this: We treat our own people well but we steal and rape all the poor nations of the world and the reverse was true for them. They lived under dictatorship and squalor in order to benefit American and European business. We never ever created prosperity for anybody else except American workers and now today American workers are finding that they too will be tossed under the Empire so that the richest people/corporations can reap all wealth and all power.
Jamie N
June 11th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Roger L I would have commented but you bhit the nail on the head.Wish most Americans though good would not be so easly lied to.With all the known lies and evidence including admiting the lies not all but the ones the can get away with.American are being almost party reasponsible for letting there government do the evil being done.If there were LARGE protests like a hundred million Americans the government would have to listen.So much for not commenting could not help it.
Maidhc Ó Cathail
June 11th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Blood for nothing? Nothing for America alright but lost blood, treasure and credibility. But like Netanyahu said about 9/11, it certainly was "very good" for Israel. Check out "Who's to Blame for the Iraq War? A Not-So-Trivial Quiz." for the names of some of the main culprits…
http://maidhcocathail.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/wh…
zhubajie
June 11th, 2011 at 10:32 pm
"Vanity of vanity, all is vanity." That certainly applies to excuses for US wars.
zhubajie
June 11th, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Let us not forget Bush's weekly briefing for various Religious Right preachers, about how whatever nonsense he was doing fit in with Prophecy and the Rapture and the End of Days.
Maidhc Ó Cathail
June 11th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
And let us also not forget the source of that Rapture nonsense…
http://stephensizer.blogspot.com/2009/12/scofield…
John Fordham
June 12th, 2011 at 5:54 am
Amen to that. Support for Israel is the source of all our problems in the Middle East.
Instability in Iraq, Forever War « Antiwar.com Blog
June 14th, 2011 at 7:46 am
[...] from Peter Van Buren’s blog We Meant Well (listen to his interview with Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio), we have this graph of violence in Iraq over the last six [...]
zhubajie
June 14th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Thanks. If you try to tell Israelis or Palestinians aboutDispensationalism, they refuse to believe anyone could go for suchnonsense, let alone 10s of millions of Americans.
“How I Helped Lose the Hearts and Minds” Author Under Fire « Antiwar.com Blog
September 27th, 2011 at 9:50 am
[...] Buren, who has been featured here on Antiwar.com and on Antiwar Radio, has written an explosive book about his time on a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Iraq. It [...]
Iraq snapshot (C.I.) | thecommonillsbackup
September 27th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
[...] Vlahos (Antiwar.com Blog) observes: Van Buren, who has been featured here on Antiwar.com and on Antiwar Radio, has written an explosive book about his time on a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Iraq. It [...]
and then there’s cher (Rebecca) | thecommonillsbackup
September 28th, 2011 at 2:58 am
[...] B. Vlahos (Antiwar.com Blog) observes: Van Buren, who has been featured here on Antiwar.com and on Antiwar Radio, has written an explosive book about his time on a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Iraq. It [...]