by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: May 01, 2007   Last Updated: November 17, 2008

It was a popular Democratic political tactic of protest to claim that U.S. strategies in Iraq were failing. Actually the 2003 war was a brilliant success and the nation rebuilding was a failure that needed a 'no nation left behind' remedial recovery. It wasn't until the troop surge worked after years of hard police work and reconstruction that Iraq moved more toward a working nation. A couple of days ago Iraq said that its congress will probably pass a three year extension for U.S. forces in Iraq in order to keep the peace.

President Bush was sort of a 'no child left behind' sort of guy himself-he preferred an education policy friendly to his own disposition as a smokescreen perhaps. A better domestic education policy was to let the top 25% of students get the best possible education so they could provide new enterprises and jobs in the future competing as a minority with the entire world and let the 25% that are slow or disinterested learners fall ion to recycle chutes to learn literacy and numeracy sufficient to pass a high school exit exam. I took a G.E.D. myself before getting a Bachelors degree and corrected high school exit exams from several states for a contract testing company for a while...the tests are fundamentally similar. Most Americans will never do meaningful abstract reasoning work anyway and it's a sham to dump a lot of non-material production jobs their way or create service jobs in financial sector areas that produce bad debt. Iraq needs a more intelligent policy using a lot of solar power and water desalination concepts.

The troop surge effective reduced terrorist violence in Iraq and a fragile peace has continued in to 2008 and the November election. Reconstruction of a nation torn apart by secular sectarian strife and global terrorism isn't easy. Iraq is considered a prime domino by terrorists in the effort to establish a Muslim Caliphate over the entire Middle East.

Democrats sometimes mistake Iraq for Vietnam...they love to protest war but have started them often enough in the past. The Vietnam War was a Kennedy-Johnson construction that Nixon brought to a halt, and the Iraq reconstruction is essentially successful now that could be unraveled and ruined by a Democrat administration if it isn't careful. The desire to create some sort of failure and retroactively fault Republicans shouldn't be a goal for Democrats of the new Obama administration.

Americans still consider, rather drunkenly perhaps, the Iraq nation rebuilding to be a war and

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