Not once. There's a reason for that: the Maliki "government" is irrelevant to Iraq's future, and everybody knows it. It has never been anything but an American puppet with a Dawa agenda. It has never earned any claim on long-term Iraqi loyalties. It is profoundly corrupt and patently incompetent. It achieved power, more apparent than real, only by virtue of an alliance of convenience with Sadr, who is a life-long enemy of Dawa and whose objective is control of Baghdad, and with the Kurds, whose long-term goal is independence, de jure or de facto. The only function the Maliki government now has is to serve as a funnel for American aid to reach the Shi'ites. It represents yet another American blunder in Iraq, one that has become an encumbrance and an embarassment. Anything the American military achieves in Iraq is achieved by working around the political farce in the Green Zone, not through it.

Yet Maliki's is the only government Iraq has. Everything else boils down to a regional militia. The elephant in the living room is that Iraq, as such, has nowhere to go. The most that can be achieved, from an American perspective, is a precarious balancing of the various factions against one another. That balance will depend on a great many factors, some of them (Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia) outside American control. And, as Kaplan argues, even those factors ostensibly within American control are sharply limited by military feasibility, funding and politics.

In other words, by any objective measure, Iraq is still a fool's gamble for the Americans. Its prognosis is continued hostility and instability, meaning that desperately needed new investment in its vaunted oil resources will not be forthcoming. The country will remain a basket case. American forces in Iraq will be little more than a very high-cost way of doing what Saddam used to do without cost to them.

The real purpose of the surge and all of Bush's policies is, of course, political. (Everything Bush does is for short-term political objectives, usually mostly to shift blame and avoid further embarassment). The policies are intended to smooth things over, keep the superficial peace, and go on dangling the prospect of some sort of success in front of the American people (who are so weary of the war that they will take any excuse to stop thinking about it). All of this need last only until next November. Then Bush will be off the hook, at least in his own mind. Iraq's and his party's future will become someone else's responsibility, and he can return to Crawford and active alcoholism. He hasn't really been interested in his job since November 2004.

A couple things to keep in mind:

-- When we say "Bush," it should always be taken in the larger sense, to mean the Bush Administration, and not Bush himself. Bush himself is the village idiot, who lacks the intellect to be in control of such a complex situation. The "decider" simply decides to do what his advisers tell him he needs to do. The surge and all Iraq policy really belongs to the neocon establishment, who are not leaving Washington when Bush does.

-- Bush and his handlers are true believers in this war. It's the front lines of the War of Civilizations; US control of Iraq is in Israel's strategic interest; 'nuff said. The surge was not just about Bush's personal butt-covering or blame shifting etc. The surge was the neocon's best option to keep the war going as of 12 months ago. It has been a short-term success because the war is still going, and has faded somewhat from the headlines, relieving some of the heat.

The long-term neocon goal is to turn Iraq into an Israel-friendly US client state where the US can maintain massive military installations to control the Middle East. They have infinite patience in pursuing this project. Of course they hope dearly that Guiliani will be the next president, but the project will continue even if an AIPAC-approved Democrat is elected.

Alas, the success of the surge has been limited as Kaplan mentions. The most optimistic goal - to create space for political reconciliation - has not happened even slightly, and had no chance to begin with. The success of the surge has been simply to reduce political pressure and give the neocons breathing space to plan their next maneuver to keep the war going. They have all the resources of the White House to work with, along with dependable support of the corporate media. They will come up with something. The surge itself will be quickly forgotten once the next thing hits.

Simply stringing out the war from year to year won't prove satisfactory in the long run, even if the neocons can successfully manage the headlines. Either the political strategy needs to suddenly, magically work (perhaps with a little help from Santa Claus), or a major escalation will be needed. Neocons have often cited WWII Japan as a model for what needs to be done to Moslems to bring them into submission, which is to say all-out military assault, huge destruction, and heavy-handed occupation on a scale much beyond Iraq.

Here is a possible scenario: Israel attacks Iran with US military assistance; Iran retaliates against US troops; Bush stampedes Congress to declare war on Iran and reinstate the draft to supply the troops needed for a surge-decade; the US destroys and occupies Iran. Surge as far as the eye can see.