He opposes the troop surge, but favors a smaller surge that would only cover Anbar. Focusing on Anbar while leaving Baghdad to bleed strikes me as the equivalent removing the patient’s swollen appendix while his liver is failing. But it’s worth noting, at least, that the theory that Brownback intends to ride an antiwar evangelical wave, which Andrew Sullivan has been endlessly pushing, turns out to be even less convincing than it first appeared.
