So what, then is the alternative to being "conned" by Smokelocke? Certainly Sawyer never trusted him, and all he wanted to do was get away from him. This is one of those cases where, after the fact, you look at it and say "The good guys should have taken more precautions against the bad guy's out-of-left-field gambit" when there is nothing that could have been foreseen at the time. Except for Jack carrying the backpack on board, not to mention blindly accepting it from Smokelocke, the plan would have worked. The only way Sawyer underestimated Smokelocke was in not figuring out the mystical rules by which he had to kill them. Barring Jack getting on the submarine, which was NOT part of Sawyer's plan (Sawyer designated Jack to keep Locke behind because Jack intended to stay). When you get right down to it, Locke was the one who got lucky. Did he plan for Kate to get wounded (not killed) and Jack to change his mind at the last second and carry Locke's bomb onto the sub? What was his plan if everything went the way Sawyer wanted, and they all got safely to the sub? Get in with them and wave goodbye to Jack standing there on the dock with a bomb that (according to Jack) wasn't going to go off? The elements that made his plan work were strokes of luck over which he had no control, unless he had some sort of faith that "the island" would make them all get on together, and provide him with a plausible excuse to stay.

Except Jack was now supposed ot be all about faith. He has faith that they are supposed to stay on the island and that it is necessary to keep Locke there. He had faith that the bomb wouldn't go off, because Locke isn't "allowed" to kill them. Where was his faith when it counted? If he had stuck to his guns, he would have let the others take Kate and have faith that he was doing the right thing by staying on the island. And it's not as if Claire is all that incompetant, surviving on her own for three years, or the only person with Kate! In what way is a woman hardened by three years of surviving in a jungle incapable of carrying a small skinny woman down a ladder? Once on the sub, with another guy who cares for her and a couple of other competant people, her odds were pretty good. It is not like Jack's being a doctor makes him a Final Fantasy White Mage - he needs tools and supplies and whatnot the same as anyone else. I am fairly certain a vetern soldier is competant to keep her from dying of a shoulder wound until they can reach safety.

Yes, a fat lot of good that would do, since it would be in the middle of the ocean.