That's a quote from Sheik Sattar Bazeaa Fatikhan, who is helping American forces in Ramadi. (Via Patterico's Pontifications)
Patterico had the story six weeks ago from Teflon Don's blog. The Los Angeles Times is now playing catch-up with the story. And it is a fascinating one.
After Sunni insurgents killed his father and four of his brothers last year, Fatikhan declared war against the insurgency.
He convened a summit of about a dozen prominent sheiks. From that meeting came a document called “The Awakening,” in which Fatikhan persuaded all but one sheik to join him in opposition to the insurgency.
The sheiks pledged to encourage young men to join the police force and even the Shiite-led army. The document states that killing an American is the same as killing a member of their tribes. Since the gathering, Fatikhan said, the sheiks have “eliminated” a number of insurgents.
U.S. officials regularly visit Fatikhan, seeking his counsel, showing him the kind of deference one might expect for a leading government official...
Fatikhan ordered his followers to “adopt” the U.S. Army’s liaison to the tribes and give him an Arabic name, Wissam, which means warrior. After the officer, Capt. Travis Patriquin, was killed by a roadside bomb, the sheik ordered that one of the new police stations be named in his honor.
It makes sense to me that we would use any help we can get with combatting the insurgents and stopping the violence. But the government didn't want us working with anyone outside the provisional government (presumably to give it legitimacy).
This, of course, worked about as well as not allowing CIA agents to work with informers who had criminal backgrounds. That bad guys would have a better idea what other bad guys were doing was a minor point to those wanting to keep their hands pristine. And until 9/11, that was our official policy: keep it clean. I'm hoping that the work with this sheik could spread to other areas to quell the violence.
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