How Sons of Bitches Became Sons of Iraq

I’ve never personally met a Concerned Local Citizen, or a Baquba Guardian, or a Son of Iraq, although I’ve had the dubious honour of meeting very bad people in many countries during my career. Even so, I have always presumed that co-opting local power players by bribery is not a lasting solution to an insurgency. With the war in Afghanistan run by Rumsfeld and Franks, I thought it only natural that stupid mistakes would be made, and it never surprised me that the U.S. chose to pay local warlords to serve as their proxies. But I’ve never quite understood why Petraeus has allowed the Sahwat and the SoI — smugglers, murderers, crooks and terrorists — to flourish on his watch in Iraq. After all, one of the central tenets of his COIN doctrine is “support the host government”.

But who exactly are these people, and what do their erstwhile enemies think of them?

Milblogger Alex at Army of Dude provides by far the most thoughtful answer I’ve come across. Please read all of it, but here’s a taste:

Why isn’t there an outcry from the media and citizenry about these people? Quite simply, the military led the media by its nose when they characterized insurgents as ‘concerned’ and proudly spoke of them as volunteers. To further confuse people, they were renamed ‘Baqubah Guardians’ and then finally ‘Sons of Iraq,’ each name a brighter shade of lipstick for the same dirty pig. They’re only growing stronger and more experienced as time goes on, watching coalition forces close up, looking for every weakness. They’ve already discovered a big one: our over-reliance on their dirty, sectarian work.

(Via The Washington Independent.)