War Front to Store Front - 9781118239223

Swords into Start-Ups is the dramatic inside story of America’s role in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan in the War on Terror, told firsthand by former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Paul Brinkley. Based on his five years overseeing economic improvement in the region under both the Bush and Obama Administrations, Brinkley exposes the vast gap between the successes American citizens have been told about (and the excuses for failures we've been given) and the reality on the ground. Brinkley further explains how many of our policies and goals in both Iraq and Afghanistan were designed by people with no business experience, that very little of the money bound for war zones made it out of D.C. (ending up in contractor bank accounts), and that most of the progress Americans have heard about has actually made the Afghan and Iraqi populace nothing but angry with us. Reporting directly to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Brinkley and his organization of business volunteers struggled against bureaucratic policies to revolutionize foreign aid by leveraging America’s strength—its private sector.

With expert advice on what it takes to rebuild and revitalize an economy under fire, Swords into Start-Ups shares up close what we have learned, what we have accomplished, and what we wish we had done differently in Iraq and Afghanistan. This engaging account details:

• How the business of American government and its largest bureaucracy, the Department of Defense, works; how a group of business leaders sought to change how it did business; and how the effort to change it led to a trip to a war zone
• Businesses in Iraq, before and after Saddam
• American support dwindling upon the start of the election season
• The Bush Administration versus the Obama Administration—their successes and failures
• A detailed firsthand account of what it’s like to experience a terrorist attack
• The Iraq election—did the citizens really elect the government?
• Politics and economics in today's Iraq
• Why the American model for foreign development must change