Meet our Next Speaker
Peter van Buren
Monday, February 6, 2012 at Noon (Point Lookout)
Topic: Lessons From the "Reconstruction" of Iraq
Peter Van Buren has served with the Foreign Service for over 23 years. He received a Meritorious Honor Award for assistance to Americans following the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe, a Superior Honor Award for helping an American rape victim in Japan, and another award for work in the tsunami relief efforts in Thailand. Previous assignments include Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the UK and Hong Kong. He volunteered for Iraq service and was assigned to ePRT duty 2009-10. His tour extended past the withdrawal of the last combat troops.
Van Buren worked extensively with the military while overseeing evacuation planning in Japan and Korea. This experience included multiple field exercises, plus civil-military work in Seoul, Tokyo, Hawaii, and Sydney with allies from the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. The Marine Corps selected Van Buren to travel to Camp Lejeune in 2006 to participate in a field exercise that included simulated Iraqi conditions. Van Buren spent a year on the Hill in the Department of State’s Congressional Liaison Office.
Van Buren speaks Japanese, Chinese Mandarin, and some Korean (the book’s all in English, don’t worry). Born in New York City, he lives in Virginia with his spouse, two daughters, and a docile Rottweiler.
His first book is entitled, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. It tells the story of a reconstruction effort gone wrong almost from the very beginning. From the Amazon review:
Darkly funny while deadly serious, We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer–and readers–appalled and disillusioned but wiser.
Peter’s commentary has been featured on TomDispatch, Salon, Huffington Post, The Nation, American ConservativeMagazine, Mother Jones, Michael Moore.com, Le Monde, Daily Kos, Middle East Online, Guernica and others.
A Few Audios of Past Presentations
Listed below are links to past presentations for which audios have recently been added. Click on the link to gain access:
- Nazila Fathi on “Iran and its Supreme Leader: Two years after the Contested Election“
- Tom DeMarco on “CyberWar: Science or Science Fiction?“
- Seth Jones on “Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa’ida Since 9/11“
- Yossi Alpher on “A Win-Win Formula for Palestinian Statehood“
- Allen Wells on “So Far From God, So Close to the United States: Mexico’s Most Pressing Challenges“
- Adam Hochschild on “A New Look at the Conflict That Shaped the 20th Century”
- Norman K. Gottwald: “Ancient Israel: Lessons for Today”
- Marvin Ott: “China and its Aspirations in Southeast Asia“
- Juan Cole on “Engaging the Muslim World”
- Joshua Landis : “How Syria Fits, and Doesn’t Fit, into US Middle Eastern Policy”
- Nicholas Thompson on “US Grand Strategy for Asia”
- Stephen Kinzer: “Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future”
- Reza Jalali: ”Iran-U.S. Relationships: Hopes and Fears“
- Graham Fuller: “A World Without Islam”
- Ira Glasser: “The War on the War on Drugs”
- Andrew Bacevich: “America’s Path to Permanent War”
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Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations
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