Connie Bruck’s review of Chuck Hagel in The New Yorker — “The Political Scene: Odd Man Out” (November 3, 2008) misses a significant detail: the Sunni Awakening is a function of American payments, not an autonomous Iraqi response to the troop ‘surge.’ Bush-league Republicanism wants to hide this straightforward payoff scheme from its lumpen base. “We pay them not to shoot at us” sounds an awful lot like coddling criminals by handing out welfare checks — a double whammy for any self-respecting redneck. I’m sure Hagel is not fooled.

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“They [are] paid roughly $300 a month by the United States to guard checkpoints and buildings and — for those who used to be insurgents — to no longer blow up American convoys and shoot American troops.” “Awakening Movement in Iraq,” New York Times (September 22, 2008)