I mentioned this the other day when I saw Gates on Meet the Press about how Anbar Province is quieted down BECAUSE we paid them off in money and weapons AND that is how the model for what the Bush admiinistration wants to do across Iraq (Video clip). . Heck, it's a little different getting some peace because you're BRIBING the leaders, yes? Than, um, getting people to follow you because of some moral or value standard?

So, IraqSlogger calls attention to an article that the Wall Street Journal did today that discusses these payments.

The Journal's Greg Jaffe lands on the paper's front page with his piece on how the U.S. was able to court the Anbar sheikhs into turning against al Qaeda. How? Money, and lots of it. American largess has managed a turnaround that has been remarkable, with Marines able to sit on front porches now without body army and not worry about snipers. Ramadi's devastated streets are being repaired. Schools are being renovated, thanks to a paid-off sheikh being the lead contractor. But Jaffe notes with unease that it isn't clear how broad or lasting the gains made will be. Without the common enemy of al Qaeda looming, the provinces tribal sheikhs are competing for money and power and talking now of a new enemy: the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad. The Marines, to their credit, recognize the difficulty of convincing the Sunni sheikhs that they have a place in the national government, and they're trying to spread economic, political and security power around evenly. Whether the tribal leaders' loyalties can be transferred to Baghdad instead of the American paymaster is the big question.

Oh. So. Now that they've been bribed, they're using their power to go up against the Shiites. And they LIKE getting all the cash from America.

Jaffee does a great job digging into the tribal structures, their relations with other tribes and the leaders' relations with the government. He also goes into how the sheikhs' more moderate Islam -- some like the whiskey -- clashed with the dogmatic Islam of al Qaeda after the 2003 invasion, leading smaller tribes to ally with the Americans in order to gain power and influence. (America has become another tribe in Iraq, albeit the richest and most heavily armed.) Jaffe also works hard to show the tensions between the tribal leadership in Anbar and the central government -- the Sunni-Shi'ite divide is a deep one. As Jaffe concludes, "the sheiks' biggest fear is that the Americans will leave them to the devices of a failing, sectarian government in Baghdad." At a dinner with (probably) Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, one sheikh proudly said of the U.S. military, "This is my government." The Marine general who was there sighed and said that was the problem. The one weakness of this story is that it focuses on Anbar and doesn't look at whether the U.S. strategy is applicable to any of the rest of the country. In Diyala and Babil provinces, a similar strategy is yielding mixed results.

And WE are paying for this? While our bridges break down in America.