Paying Insurgents Not to Fight

Clark Anderson

According to Paul Roberts of Counterpunch, the real purpose of "the surge" was to distract the American people from a different tactic, paying the Sunnis not to attack Americans.

The Bush Administration has been claiming for many years now that we are defending Iraqis from terrorists "and other extremists". What they fail to mention is that according to the NIE Report, Al Qaeda makes up only 2% of the people our military is fighting everyday. The other 98% are "extremists", but really they are just unemployed and impoverished Iraqi citizens looking to feed their families and do so by accepting money for attacking the American military.

Looking more closely at the past year, the "surge" has in fact brought the violence down, but was it the number of troops on the ground, or the U.S. Government giving the Iraqi citizens alternative employment?

The real purpose of the "surge" was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack US forces. That's right, 80,000 members of an "Awakening group," the "Sons of Iraq," a newly formed "US-allied security force" consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack US troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al Qaeda.

This is a much cheaper way to fight a war. We can only wonder why Bush didn't figure it out sooner.

The "surge" was also timed to take account of the near completion of neighborhood cleansing. Most of the violence in Iraq during the past five years has resulted from Sunnis and Shi'ites driving each other out of mixed neighborhoods. Had the two groups been capable of uniting against the US troops, the US would have been driven out of Iraq long ago. Instead, the Iraqis slaughtered each other and fought the Americans in their spare time.

In other words, the "surge" has had nothing to do with any decline in violence.
With the Sunni insurgents now on Uncle Sam's payroll, with neighborhoods segregated, and with al Sadr's militia standing down, it is unclear who is still responsible for ongoing violence other than US troops themselves. Somebody must still be fighting, however, because the US is still conducting air strikes and is still unable to tell friend from foe.