A U.S. State Department employee who presided over vast waste of taxpayer dollars in Iraq raises a powerful question: Why can’t some of that money spent on worthwhile purposes in the United States?
The answer, says author Peter Van Buren, is that our political system freely provides spending with scant accountability for military-oriented and "democracy-building" foreign affairs projects but not for parallel domestic purposes. Van Buren is a 23-year-veteran of the State Department who spent a year implementing aid programs in Iraq from 2009 to 2010 before publishing last fall a memoir, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. He shared his recollections Jan. 25 in a lecture at the National Press Club, and will amplify Feb. 2 on my weekly public affairs radio show “Washington Update” at noon (ET) on the MTL network live nationwide.
Among the situations he describes are building expensive chicken and milk processing plants of virtually no value to the local communities, and then scrambling to pretend that the projects were successful. In one instance, he recalls, U.S. government workers bought chickens from a nearly 20 mile radius just so that a visiting blogger friendly with a general would be able to write a favorable blog under the impression the chicken plant actually functioned. He spoke also of government mandates to foster small businesses in Iraq by handing out money with scant controls. Sometimes, he said, U.S. workers would simply go out on a street in Iraq and hand out to random pedestrians $5,000 apiece in cash with encouragement to start a business.
