Andy and Happy Thoughts

Here are a few pieces from Andrew Sullivan.
Andrew is apparently upset with Bill Kristol. The only complaint I have about that is that when he points out that Bill has been unwillingto criticize Bush before the election, he does not also point out that Bill did disagree with Bush on troop levels since - well, at least several months ago and quite possibly last (i.e. 2003) summer. I remember him constantly beating the drums for more troops, so his belief that Bush has not put enough troops on the ground is something that he has been implicitly announcing for a while now; he's not a Billy-come-lately.
As to the issue of more troops itself, I sort of agree with Andrew and sort of don't. While I think that it is true that we will need more troops if we are to keep order Iraq over the next few months (at least unless we decide to keep order through collective punishment and mass slaughter), I think that it will be a temporary solution at best.
Ultimately, the longer we are in Iraq, the more the populace will turn against us. Unless we can pinprick our attacks enough to cause very, very little collateral damage, each of our campaigns will probably create more terrorists than they kill.
I think that in any counter-guerilla campaign, the military aspect can only provide a solution once enough people are killed that it becomes hard to garner new recruits. This happens either because potential new recruits see the cause as hopeless, or because everyone who could potentially join the insurgency is dead. In other words, our efforts against the insurgency will further enrage the soldierable* populace until there is no one left to enrage. So until we kill, let's say, 2 or 3 million Iraqi males, I have a feeling that military solutions alone won't work.

*Apt to fight in a war.