Okay Tom, you've spurred me to post a counter-analysis. The author falls into the dangerous "kill indiscriminately" solution and that's not a real solution, and indeed, mirrors the way tyrants have held power throughout recorded history.

The problem with Iraq is one of complex Muslim societal issues played out on the Iraq stage. Iraq could happen anywhere where Muslims are the overwhelmingly dominant religion. The same social unrest happened in Algeria, Egypt, Iran - all over.

Insurgency is a fancy name for social unrest. Let's get to the very heart of the Iraq problem:

Muslim society does not believe in governments per se. They are not western minded. To the hordes of people living in Muslim lands, any government inherits legitimacy so long as they are perceived to be acting as an agent of Islam. Their are no loyal citizens in these regions - only peoples with loyalty to Islam itself.

The organ that has evolved over the centuries is, for lack of a better term, the Muslim religious brotherhood. To find their origin one can turn back the clock to the 11th century and the Turkish and Mongol invasions which formed in Muslim lands a frontier Muslim - a fighter and a city-dweller Muslim - a farmer or merchant. Through violence Islam was respected and invaders kept out and both types of Muslims had to deal with frontier-city integration. In Iraq the same structure exists. The remote regions are still drowning with frontier Muslims and the cities have historically been pacifists, depending upon them for protection from invaders.

The problem with such peoples is this:

If anyone comes along who can convince them that their beliefs and goals are the 'most true' Islamic ideals - they can gather allegiance and followers.

So nationalism means nothing to the Iraqi. Not really. They are loyal first and foremost to Islam and Islam's leaders. Saddam built the huge Muslim shrines and depicted himself with Islamic symbols or verse to sustain that partnership with the peoples he oppressed.

Islam is comparable to the most fanatical cult and many of its members will kill themselves for Islam because they have been indoctrinated by an elaborate religious system that sustains and reinfects each successive generation through the Mosques, temples and schools. Islam is their life. They can't escape it when living in these regions.

At the same time this is why Islam and the lands where Muslims live are racked with endless bloodshed - because they have never had their faith in Islam shattered enough to embrace nationalistic, political or governmental allegiance. So we have Islamic leaders who attract and retain followers. Al Qaeda is just a militant arm of the Muslim Brotherhood as are Hamas and any other umbrella names for groups whose actions bespeak of a militant Islam. Because Islam has no stable social structure, you have high turnover in these regions as the latest Muslim bubble of the month rises to the top of the boiling cauldron. Such bubbles are short lived and another one soon takes its place.

All these folks do not seek a democracy. They seek only a government that will provide services in the name of Islam. Anyone can go to a Islamic town, pass out bread and medicine in the name of Allah and achieve a loyal following. Many of these regions are filled with simple people and such an appearance is all they ask.

You wonder why any rational Lebanese would talk favorably of Hezbollah? It is because they serve their militancy and violence with a serving of public services - they effectively fill the entire need of the average Islamic - a structure, any structure, that provides public services with Islamic rhetoric and ritual.

So now that we have an understanding of the inherent social-structure void that is Islam and the Muslim peoples, we look at Iraq and see the same old thing. We have insurgents espousing their version of Islam as a true ideal and followers who join up. Anyone or any groups whose actions are perceived as being anti-Islam, will lose followers and gain enemies. So the loyalties of the peoples in Iraq are as shifting as the sand. Their only true loyalty throughout the entire reign of Saddam, or now is Islam. They are certainly not loyal to the Americans, because they fundamentally lack that necessary ingredient - they are not Muslim!

If our miltary were Muslim and our nation were Muslim, the millions of bystanders in Iraq would have pulled more strongly for their new fledgling government. As it stands, enemies of America can manipulate Muslims by pointing out this glaring omission.

How can America have any Muslims' best interest in mind when they are not Muslim???? Infidels are not to be trusted with the fortunes of the Muslim peoples.

With a few carefully worded sentences the lifelong indoctrinated Muslim can be made to change allegiances - and if they do not - can be made to seem disloyal to Islam itself. This tactic finds endless fodder for revolutionaries and insurgents. The entire Muslim social structure is so screwed up that the average inhabitant has to fear for their life if their faith is challenged.

The very public displays of faith demanded by Islam are not accidental. Kneeling and touching the ground towards Mecca repeatedly assures and comforts all around them of their allegiance. After centuries, the social structure is so vacuous that the survival and well being of every inhabitant of these regions has depended upon such displays and on adhering to the rules of Islam. It's just like Europe during the inquisition, when your neighbor could easily get you killed just by calling into question your faith. The result in Iraq? Thousands of easily replaced recruits for the insurgency - who live in the frontier areas where life demands conformity to the wishes of the local Islamic leader.

The author of your linked piece doesn't address any of this. He seeks to justify escalation of force as the only true deterrant to insurgency.

While some may see such as a solution, I don't. The needs of Iraq are a stable government that can be seen by the majority of inhabitants as the true voice of Islam in the region. The military and police forces of Iraq should ideally be seen as agents of Islam - not as a new US backed government.

That is what the intelligentsia failed to counter - a problem that has been known to the think-tanks for decades and when tasked for a solution come with no attractive answers. A counter-insurgency must combine public services and rebuilding with the name of Islam.

The new government needs to build new temples and Mosques and symbols of Islam, just as Saddam did. They need to consolidate enough of the frontier people into a working relationship just as did their farmer-merchant ancestors did in the 11th century. We had "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" as a rallying cry and the French had Liberte', Egalite', Fraternite', but what do the Iraqis have? All they have is 'Allah Ackbar!' and this must be integrated into the policing of Iraq and the dismantling of the insurgency.

If the new government fails to satiate these people's basic need of Islamic glory and public services they will be replaced by someone or some group who can.

Even the most ruthless US military could never completely excise the suicidal element which is an inherent portion of the cloth of Islamic culture. So even if you could keep attacks down to a bare minimum of three or four suicide attacks per year, today's weaponry permits even one suicidal individual to kill a hundred with relative ease.

So to sum up, the 'Iraqi solution' for the western minds of today needs to be:

"Allah Ackbar! Oh, and here's a candy bar, electricity, water and a stable job"

We've simply handicapped ourselves in the region by omitting the first two words from our message.