A look back as we move ahead

As we begin 2008, it looks like a year of much potential change and perhaps some risk, but let's face it, no one really knows what the future will bring.

So, on this day of repose following a night of celebration, we will instead look back at 2007 and remember just a few of the highlights of an interesting year.

Without question, the top story of 2007 was the dramatic turnaround in Iraq, despite the best efforts of Democratic leaders to ensure that it didn't happen.

Gen. David Petraeus deserves credit for the success of a counterinsurgency strategy that was driven by a "surge" of 30,000 additional troops.

Our readers can decide for themselves what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid deserves for declaring earlier this year that "the war is lost" and for pursuing, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, more than 60 futile measures aimed at cutting off funding to force the United States to withdraw from Iraq.

Abandoning the field and allowing Iraq to devolve into a basket- case hell hole would have profound, long-lasting consequences for the United States and the Middle East.

It was a big year, too, for former Vice President Al Gore, who won an Academy Award for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," and also claimed a Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change campaign.

He and his supporters certainly deserve their moment in the sun, but it is unfortunate that his rhetoric has fueled a widespread, almost religious hysteria over climate change. We don't need sudden and immensely expensive regulations and restrictions to save the planet when there is still plenty of doubt about what role mankind plays in planetary weather cycles.

What we do need are incentives for industries to continue pollution (and emission) reductions, and to pursue technologies that conserve energy. These pursuits can be beneficial, whether you believe in human-caused global warming or not.

The Montana Legislature had perhaps one of the most contentious sessions in state history this year. For the first time in modern history, the session ended without a general fund budget, forcing lawmakers to return to Helena for a brief special session that finally produced a budget.

Most disappointing was the failure to produce meaningful property tax relief. While Gov. Brian Schweitzer successfully advanced a one-time $400 property tax rebate for Montana homeowners, it was a token payment that won't make up for tax increases that property owners can count on from one year to the next.

Every legislative election season, most candidates in the Flathead talk about how local residents consider property tax relief to be a priority. If we are going to look forward to a change, let's skip 2008 altogether and ponder how the 2009 Legislature can meet that challenge with some actual reform.