This morning it’s Nicholas Kristof and Orlando Patterson — Kristof on the surge and Patterson on Portia Simpson, Jamaica’s first female leader. First up, Kristof:

A surge in the number of troops in Iraq might have helped in 2003 or early 2004.

But in 2007, President Bush’s plan seems to represent a warmed-over variant of approaches that have already been tried and mostly failed, that are opposed by some top American military commanders and ordinary Iraqis alike, and whose most likely outcome will be many more Americans in body bags or wheelchairs.

The reality is that we’ve already tried surges. There was one of 20,000 troops in early 2004, a similar one in the fall of 2005, and one a bit smaller in the summer of 2006.

As recently as July, Mr. Bush cheerily described a plan “to deploy additional American troops and Iraqi security personnel in Baghdad in the coming weeks.” He explained that this would “bring greater security to the Iraqi capital ... [and] root out those who instigate violence.”

By October, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, was acknowledging that the recent troop increases “had not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence.”

Proponents of escalation cite the example of Tal Afar, a town in northwestern Iraq. U.S. forces there have met some genuine success since September 2005 with the “clear, build and hold” strategy that Mr. Bush apparently now favors for Baghdad.

But Tal Afar is only about one-thirtieth the size of Baghdad, and it isn’t even Arab: its people are mostly members of the Turkmen minority. Trying to replicate that (limited) success in Baghdad is a fool’s errand.

In Tal Afar, there was one U.S. soldier for every 40 residents. Using the same ratio in Baghdad would require 150,000 troops, sustained for more than a year. That’s impossible.

Mr. Bush’s surge may be just big enough to expose more troops to danger and to let the Iraqi government off the hook, without being big enough to achieve security.

Don Rumsfeld was wrong on just about everything in Iraq — except the downside of additional troops there: “More forces, U.S. and coalition forces, create the impression of an occupation,” he said. Indeed, any expansion of our military presence is likely to bolster anti-American radicals, like Moktada al-Sadr.

Sure, Iraq promises to help in the crackdown. But my bet is that — once again — Iraqi leaders will make big pledges and then let us do the heavy lifting.

In any case, sending in even more young Americans won’t help counterinsurgency efforts when, according to an American-sponsored poll conducted in September, 78 percent of Iraqis believe that the American troop presence is “provoking more conflict than it is preventing.” That’s why Iraqis overwhelmingly favor a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, and it’s one reason I do as well.

Mr. Bush is right about the risks of withdrawal: our pullout could be followed by a vast bloodbath and by a regional war in which Iran backs Iraqi Shiite militias and Saudi Arabia and Jordan back Iraqi Sunnis (with Turkey marching into Kurdistan). But all that may unfold anyway, and the prospect of withdrawal may be the best hope to galvanize Iraqi factions to take steps to avert such a catastrophe.

If Mr. Bush succeeds in escalating our military involvement, it’s almost inevitable that many more Americans will be killed and injured. The focus has been on fatalities, but by some counts there have been 16 American service injuries for every death. That’s partly a tribute to improvements in military medicine, for in Vietnam there were 2.6 injuries per American fatality.

All told, between 22,000 and 50,000 Americans have been injured so far in Iraq (depending on who does the counting); the higher number is one-third as many as in the entire Vietnam War. Linda Bilmes, a Harvard scholar who has written a new report on the war injuries, notes that the backlog for veterans’ disability claims has risen more than fivefold since 2000, and she cites horror stories like that of a staff sergeant who suffered severe brain injuries and then had his pay stopped and utilities cut because of a bureaucratic error.

“If the new Congress really wants to support our troops,” Ms. Bilmes writes, “it should start by spending a few more pennies on the ones who have already fought and come home.”

That’s a responsibility Mr. Bush should assume as well. And when he speaks to the nation to urge more troops in Iraq, he needs to explain why the back alleys of Baghdad are the best places to invest additional buckets of American blood.

And now Orlando Patterson, datelined Kingston, Jamaica:

Thirty-two years ago, a young working-class woman, Portia Simpson, exploded onto the Jamaican political scene with an unexpected electoral victory in the slums of southwestern Kingston, the heart of opposition party turf, dominated by armed political gangs.

Soon after, I accompanied her on a tour of the area in the hope of laying plans for an urban upgrading project. As we approached Rema, a notorious opposition holdout, five gunshots pierced the heat. Dashing for cover, I looked back to see Simpson being reluctantly pulled away by two of her aides. Left to herself, she would have carried on, so deep was her hunger to help the people from whom she had just risen. I thought then that this woman would go far.

She did. Last February, Portia Simpson-Miller stunned the political establishment by outmaneuvering the heir apparent, Peter Phillips, in the struggle to succeed Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, who retired in midterm, and in March she took office as Jamaica’s first female leader. There was national jubilation, especially among women, who wept at the sight of “Momma,” “Auntie Portia” or “Sista P.,” as they lovingly call her.

Even skeptics felt that it was hard to do worse than what the men had achieved for the mass of Jamaicans in abysmal poverty, after four decades of modernization that had benefited only the middle and upper classes. Simpson’s approval ratings soared, and for a heady few weeks the claims of her supporters that the healing hand of a woman was what the country needed seemed borne out. And an almost tactile sense of unity and good will soothed the anxieties of daily life in this overheated polity.

The honeymoon was brief. Hardly two months into her leadership, opposition forces and the media unleashed a barrage of criticisms against her, the gist being that she was hopelessly unqualified for the job. Her modest education, undistinguished performance in Parliament, Creole speech, populism and refusal to face the press have been grist for the media and opposition mill. What turned a tidal wave of criticism into a tsunami, however, was the revelation that a Dutch commodities firm, Trafigura Beheer BV, which does business with the government, had misrepresented a campaign donation of $470,000 that it made to her party. In fact, Jamaica has no campaign finance laws to break, and there is a long tradition of businesses donating to political parties. The government, however, handled the revelation ineptly before returning the money, providing endless fodder for the media.

On Sunday, I had a candid two-hour conversation with Sista P. at her official residence. She is as defiant as ever. At 61, she appears in her early 40s, her youthfulness emphasized by deep bangs hanging over dark, sparkling eyes. She noted that in 2006 the economy grew at one of its fastest rates in years, 2.4 percent, inflation was low, 5.3 percent, and that major crime fell by 20 percent. So why the criticisms?

“Because I’m a woman in a field dominated by men, and because of my background,” she insisted. Why has she been avoiding the press? “I’ve been beaten, banged and bashed by the media,” she said. “They are trying to kill my charisma” because “every time they see me they are looking at the majority of Jamaicans who are poor and they can only think, ‘How dare this uppity woman.’ ” She added later, “As leader, I have the right to refuse to speak to those who misrepresent what I say.”

She dismissed the Trafigura affair as a media exaggeration, the only impropriety coming from the company, which, to circumvent Dutch laws, misrepresented the donation. She is confident of winning the coming elections, although her approval rating in polls is down to 30 percent.

Mistakes have been made, and Sista P. has to change her attitude toward the press, but I share her belief that Jamaica’s patriarchalism and class biases are stacked against her. So, too, is the British parliamentary system that operates here, which requires of leaders a demanding mix of political, debating and executive skills.

Sista P. embraced me and kissed me on the cheek as we parted, and I wished her luck in the coming elections, required by October. She is going to need it.

Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, is a guest columnist.