Historical or literary examples of misguided or botched attempts to help that end up causing harm [duplicate]
Solution 1:
The quintessential exclamation from the person receiving this sort of "help" would be:
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
It's also possible that you'd find that
The cure is worse than the disease
In that accepting their assistance is worse than just living with your original situation.
You might also say that
I can't afford any more help like this.
Probably the shortest charitable way to describe such assistance is to say that it was "well-intentioned" or "well-meant", as seen from this entry at m-w.com for "well-meaning":
: having or showing a desire to do something good but often producing bad results
Solution 2:
There's an English proverb that goes:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It's pretty broad in its scope of application, but it would certainly apply here.
There's another saying that might fit this situation:
No good deed goes unpunished.
Solution 3:
There are several synonymous variants of a phrase that seems to suit your purpose:
- more hindrance than help
- more a hindrance than a help
- more of a hindrance than a help
- less help than hindrance
- less a help than a hindrance
- less of a help than a hindrance
Of these, the most common seems to be "more of a hindrance than a help", though I seem to recall that the "more of a" construction is chiefly American, so I imagine that British English speakers would probably prefer "more a hindrance than a help".
Solution 4:
A term from spy-craft and international politics is "blowback". E.g. you spend years training insurgents to fight your enemy, and then they turn around and attack you. If you're looking for a real-world example, the late and not lamented Osama bin Laden is a good one.
Solution 5:
Too many cooks spoil the broth Wiktionary says
If too many people participate in a task, they spoil everything
Perhaps the "helpers" all had good intentions but in the end, the result was disasterous.