A U.S. “Legacy of Waste” in Iraq, by Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times, documents the culmination of seven years of failed public diplomacy:

As U.S. combat operations officially end this week and Washington’s reconstruction effort winds up, Iraqis complain that America is leaving little behind to show for an investment that President Bush promised in 2003 would parallel the post- World War II Marshall Plan in its scope and accomplishments. …

A power plant in southern Baghdad is operating at 50% capacity because it wasn’t designed to withstand Iraq’s searing temperatures. …

Baban said the Iraqi government has taken on only 300 of the 1,500 reconstruction projects handed over so far by the U.S. The rest have been "put on the shelf," he said, because they are too shoddy to continue, aren’t needed, or are incomplete and lack the documentation such as plans and contracts that the Iraqis would need to finish them. …

The $32.5-million cost of a sewage treatment facility for the war-ravaged city of Fallouja, begun in 2005 by the U.S. military, has mushroomed to $104 million, and will now reach only 4,300 homes instead of the 24,500 originally envisioned, if it ever reaches any homes at all. Although the treatment plant is almost complete, the contract did not include a pipeline to connect the plant to the town.

"I asked the Americans, what is the benefit of building such a project without building the pipeline?" said Fallouja’s council head, Hamid Ahmed Hashem.

Iraqis marvel at the price tag attached to many of the ventures. The 94-bed Children’s Hospital in Basra, launched with much fanfare by then-First Lady Laura Bush in 2004, was originally pegged for completion in 2005 at a cost of $37 million. It remains unfinished, and the cost has spiraled to $171 million, $110 million of which was provided by U.S. taxpayers. …

Successes tend to have been simpler in scope and smaller in scale. Several Baghdad parks renovated by the U.S. military for about $2 million apiece are jammed with people every day, as is a swimming pool in Sadr City. Micro-grants to shopkeepers of a few thousand dollars each helped regenerate the economy in Baghdad after the U.S. troop buildup in 2007 tamped down violence.

While functionally this development aid was generally outside the bureaucratic institutions of public diplomacy – from the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs to the public diplomacy desks of the geographic bureaus and the Embassy. In fact, we know from the records, including Bremer’s stunning account of the early years in Iraq, that the various offices and desks of public diplomacy had little to no input into the development programming and monitoring. Regardless, public diplomacy is not defined by whether a specific bureaucracy is involved or not: these acts, which did not meet our promises, shaped perceptions and attitudes in the “last three feet” of engagement with local and global audiences, as well as gave ammunition to our adversaries in the struggle for minds and wills.

This was nothing like the Marshall Plan – and despite the rhetoric, it was never going to be like the Marshall Plan because the fundamentals of the European Recovery Program were completely lost on America’s leaders (which is slightly ironic considering the number of Soviet experts… then again, they were focused on the latter part of the Cold War, not the first half when the struggle for minds and wills actually meant something).

See also:

• NPR’s Following the Reconstruction Money in Iraq