Is the escalation working?

In today's media environment, anything positive that a liberal says about the escalation will become Bushist propaganda instantly and permanently. On account of this, anti-war liberals should not take the Lieberman path.

But that's a different question from the original one: is the surge working?

Since they're politicians, the Bushists did not set any specific criteria for success. That's too risky; better to have latitude after the fact to argue the escalation was a success. I hope they had eyes-only objective criteria written down somewhere in advance but with this bunch of losers, I doubt it.

What hopes did Americans have when the escalation began? I see the goal as improving security to gain two things:

• a greater sense of safety and relief for those Iraqis on all sides who are tired of violence - that way, they might stop supporting or acquiescing to their faction's killers
• a chance for the Iraqi political authorities to reach compromise and institute effective civil government

The first is primary since it's the mechanism to bring about the second. The proof of success of the escalation would be a lasting effect on the level of violence in Iraq - fewer dead, fewer bombings, etc. It wouldn't hurt if the infrastructure improved at least to Saddam-provided levels.

Has violence diminished? Early in the escalation, the answer was unequivocally 'no'. More Americans were dying; no fewer Iraqis were dying. Now, I don't know.

If the trend in violence is clearly not better, the escalation failed. If it is better, the escalation still has some hope of success.

Normally, I would say that judging this is complicated by the fact that the U.S. military won't try to keep civilian casualty statistics. But since nothing coming out of the executive branch is credible in the Bush Administration, at least without outside confirmation, we'll just have to rely on the information of others.

For now, that information is equivocal. Most of the positive news emphasizes a lower death toll month-to-month, often following a bad month. Really, I'd need to see a clear trend to reach even a tentative conclusion.

If by some miracle the escalation has actually worked, we won't actually know until it is over. Mere suppression by superior force of the civil war engulfing Iraq is not enough achieve lasting civil order.

We're not going to get that sort of clear indication, I'm afraid. Instead, we'll get mushy, cherry-picked statistics and sweet, too-good-to-be-true anecdotes such as the one the Washington Post published Thursday.

Politically, liberals should say things like, "There would be more hope if the Bush Administration had pushed the Iraqis to get off their duffs and achieve some, any political progress. That would make use of the sacrifices of our troops."