Serving in the Peace Corps is the next best thing to carrying a baby out of a burning house to most Americans. But according to a former Peace Corps country director, Robert L. Strauss, the Peace Corps has never been what it should be, it's severely broken and is in need of a fix. To see his whole, surprisingly negative story in Foreign Policy magazine, click here. Did you serve in the Peace Corps? What was your experience?

If you think the Peace Corps is one of the best things America has ever done, here is Strauss' response:

Dream on. Today, the Peace Corps remains a Peter Pan organization, afraid to grow up, yet also afraid to question the thinking of its founding fathers. The rush to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign pledge was such that the Peace Corps never learned to crawl, let alone walk, before it set off at a sprinter’s pace. The result is a schizophrenic entity, unsure if it is a development organization, a cheerleader for international goodwill, or a government-sponsored cross-cultural exchange program. In any case, the Peace Corps tries to do too many things in too many places with too few people to really get much of anything done at all.