Losing Iraqi Hearts and Minds

This book by a State Department insider and eyewitness turned whistle-blower is about our misadventures in Iraq.  Andrew Bacevich, the prescient author of the recently published Washington Rules,shrewdly noted that years after the self-serving memoirs (mainly ghost-written) by the major actors in the invasion and occupation “are consigned to some landfill,” Peter Van Buren’s sensible, funny, and ultimately sad portrait of  failed nation-building will need to be resurrected and read and re-read, especially in our schools and media offices, the latter because so many publications and TV commentators were cheerleaders for the invasion.