WE MEANT WELL

Peter Ban Buren's book, "WE MEANT WELL: How I Helped Lose the War for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People" is reminiscent of Vietnam in a sense. MAINLY IN BEING STUPID!

I heard this Van Buren interviewed on NPR. I'm going to buy the book. Sounds like some good stories, telling us what we already know: we f..ked up big time in Iraq in involving ourselves and once we realize we've f..ked up, we compound it by being stupid. 

I always asked myself, "why would a guy like Van Buren write such a book. I surely can't answer for him but think it is out of frustration. He has witnessed all this stupidity and wants to record it andsyne even have something to say in stopping it. Talk about p...ing in the wind. Forget it...

And, the same sort of idiocy continues in Iraq and bigtime in Afghanistan even today. For Van Buren the "powers that be" didn't appear to give a s..t as he admits that he fell in line too with being stupid. 

As a "midget" in the great scheme of things, what is utterly discouraging to me is that "tell all" books like Van Buren's, which should serve as some sort of "lessons learned" don't matter for "s..t."  In Vietnam, we would take a piece of ground, give it up. Then we tried Vietnimization, win the hearts and minds of the people (does that sound familiar). The next thing was "body count." The soldiers realized it was bullshit but kept on doing it. Now, of course, as we are still into two wars with less than dubious results and this is saying it mildly as we still continue to be stupid, stupid, stupid.