Of all the problems we could face in Iraq, the often-cited worry that Sunni Arabs who defected to our side under the various "awakening" movements might resume the war is my least worry.
People need to chill out. The Sunni Arabs defected because we were hammering them and their jihadi allies were killing them, too. The difference was for us it was business and for the jihadis, killing Sunni Arabs not as devout as the jihadis wanted was pure pleasure. The Sunnis chose wisely to give up based on that difference.
It is wrong to say, as the Left often does, that we paid the Sunnis to switch sides. We beat them and the payments just added carrot to the stick of our military efforts to provide a psychological cover for ending their insurrection. The Sunni Arabs effectively surrendered and the option of resuming the war this generation is just about nil.
Aside from the difficulty of starting a war they ended, remember that paying these Sons of Iraq allowed us to add each and every one of them to our database:
Colonel Watson, the American commander in Dora, acknowledged that there was some risk of Awakening members returning to the insurgency or turning to criminal activity. But he said that every Awakening member’s fingerprints and retinal scans were on file, and his address and family were known both to the Americans and the Iraqi government.
“They are already identified by us and the National Police,” Colonel Watson said. “So that if they have any thought of going back to the insurgency it’s pretty difficult for them.”
So Sunni Arabs can whine about slow progress or grievances, but we know where they live.
It's funny, really. We couldn't have made retinal scans and fingerprints a condition of surrender, but we could make those measures a condition of employment. Best money we ever spent, I'd say.
If we're to face a renewed armed threat inside Iraq, it will come from Iranian-backed Shias or Kurds, I suspect. The Sunni Arabs are finished. We know where they live.
UPDATE: We've taken advantage of holding suspicious Sunni Arab males in Iraq by making sure we know who they are with iris scans, fingerprints, and even DNA samples. Restarting a terrorism campaign after they've abandoned it once isn't that easy. It isn't a switch to be flipped back and forth. If some Sunnis decide to go back to war, they'll find a lot of their supporters have moved on. And the rest will be too worried we know where they live.
