Bush supporters, including some Republican presidential candidates, have been boasting lately that Bush’s troop surge in Iraq last year is “working.”  However, for several reasons, this claim is highly dubious.  First, there never were any clear goals stated for the surge, nor was any timetable ever given, so there actually is no objective way to tell if it is “working” or not.  Has it reduced violence as much as it should have or as quickly as it should have?  We’ll never know.

Second, and more significant, is the fact that military air strikes in Iraq increased by a factor of five from 2006 to 2007:  1447 bombs in ’07 versus 229 bombs in ’06.  Obviously, if America blows up enough “suspected insurgents” in Baghdad, it will (at least, in the short term) have a very chilling effect on insurgent violence.  What the military doesn’t tell us, of course, is how many innocent Iraqi civilians were blown up in the process — a fact that Bush supporters…and far too many other Americans…conveniently ignore.

Third, Iraqi leaders are probably seeing the handwriting on the wall:  American troop levels will almost certainly drop after Bush leaves office, so they’d better start getting their act together.  Of course, we don’t know if they really are working harder to quell the violence in their country, but I would bet that they are.

In sum, there are several reasons for discounting the assertion that Bush’s surge is “working.”  Nevertheless, there is one way in which we can all agree that it is working:  if the goal of the surge was to give political cover for Republicans running for elected office.  Before the surge, Bush’s “stay the course” strategy was an utter failure, yet it also seemed clear that killing enough Iraqis would eventually reduce insurgent attacks, so what better way to make it appear that Republicans had a clue what they were doing than by declaring a new strategy, bombing the crap out of Baghdad, and then (quickly, before violence returns to pre-surge levels) declaring that the new strategy was a “success?”  At least it gives Republican candidates better propaganda than they had a year ago.

Let’s just hope American voters don’t fall for it.