Let's hear some more opinions about what word might better have been chosen.
How about "Zelig-like"? The Wall Street Journal used this term in a headline a week or so ago. I confess, I was confused and had to look up "Zelig" in the dictionary. Zelig, in case you don't know (or don't remember), is the name of a character Woody Allen plays in a film about an obsessively insecure person who mirrors the opinions and prejudices of everyone into whose company he stumbles (including the Nazis even tho Zelig is Jewish). I remember seeing the movie but I didn't remember the name "Zelig" in the WSJ headline ... which perhaps makes me unsuitable for readership of the Wall Street Journal. Anyway, does "Zelig-like" work for you, wwh? Incidentally, you have stirred up a very interesting discussion here. I hear your argument about defection not being a true "exchange", and also your argument that a serial defector will be done in after his first defection, but I beg to differ with you, dear wwh, on both accounts. First, a transfer of allegiance in Afghanistan involves reciprocity. It is not unilateral because the new leader absorbs the 'defector' into his ranks. Second, as I understand the culture of the Afghan warrior, changing sides is not a 'defection' and it is not dishonourable. Furthermore, it can be performed serially without punitive consequences. This is so because Islamic warriors in these cultures exalt the myth of the 'strongman', rather like the peoples who exalted Marlon Brando's character in "Apocalypse Now" (based on Joseph Conrad's book "Heart of Darkness"). In this ancient reality, a "strongman" only has virtue while he is strong. Once he loses his strength, he is no longer capable of protecting his followers and he has lost his virtue and with it any claim to leadership. Thus, when the follower of a defeated strongman passes his allegiance over to the conqueror, he is not defecting, he is simply acknowledging the new reality of his tribal community. Years ago, I read that the director of Apocalyse Now studied the works of an anthropologist who spent a life-time investigating the rituals of ancient tribes. When a leader in one of these ancient tribes became weak through age or other infirmity, the leader's weakness threatened the vitality of the tribe. Therefore, any tribesman strong enough to depose the weakened leader by killing him, appropriated the virtue of the fallen leader and resuscitated the vitality of the tribe. (There may be a parallel here with the beehive where the hive is more important than the Queen.) So it is, I suggest, with valiant Afghan warriors who shift their allegiances so effortlessly from one fallen strongman to his conqueror. Power itself is virtue to these people, not the personality which inhabits the power.