I just finished We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People by Peter Van Buren.

He was part of an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in 2009 and 2010. His conclusion as expressed in the book was that the PRTs, or at least his, did absolutely nothing, nothing at all to improve the situation in Iraq. Nothing...except spend lots and lots of money to no purpose.

I remember when those things were just getting started and there was much earnest discussion on SWJ and other places on how they should be set up, run, administered, financed, judged etc. In the event, it was all useless. The object of the PRTs wasn't to actually do anything, it was to appear to have been doing something so reports could be generated and careers advanced; and that was done by spending money. Nothing had to show for it, it just had to be spent.

That took up about half of the book. The rest of it was just his impressions of FOB life and seeing Iraq from the inside of an MRAP. Those parts were ok but the value of the book was the depiction of the amoral attitude many people in both State and the Army took toward civil development. The Career Centric Small War.