Opinion: In today’s pages: Iraq, Gitmo, LAUSD and healthcare

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On the Op-Ed page today, John P. Hannah, security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney during President George W. Bush’s second term, evaluates whether Iraq is ready for the looming withdrawal of U.S. troops from its cities. His conclusion is that President Obama is effectively giving up on Iraq before the job is done:

Under Obama, Bush’s commitment to winning in Iraq has all but vanished. Convinced from the start that the war was a mistake (a conviction fortified by the Bush team’s post-invasion bungling), Obama has for years been the salesman in chief for a narrative of failure: Iraq is seen as a colossal disaster -- a senseless distraction that drained U.S. resources while alienating the rest of the world. While recognizing a vague obligation to help Iraqis forge a better future, Obama’s bottom line comes through loud and clear: The war was a strategic blunder, and the sooner the U.S. can wash its hands of it and re-focus on our ‘real’ priorities in the Middle East, the better.

While Hannah argues that Obama’s focus in the Middle East has shifted to Iran and he’d rather be done with Iraq, isn’t the pulling out of troops and the handing of power to a government we helped build part of getting the job done? Even Bush was not planning on staying in Iraq forever, but that’s the track we’ve been on since the 2003 invasion. Retreating our troops so the Iraqi police can take over the security of Iraqi cities may be the right step to the conclusion for which Hannah is calling.

Criminal Justice Professor Eric J. Williams writes to another aspect of the Bush administration’s legacy: Guantanamo Bay. Williams specifically responds to the surprise expressed by many Republican politicians over a myriad of rural towns asking for the Gitmo detainees, as prisons have become an economic remedy for such towns that have lost staple industries.

The two other Op-Eds today offer more hopeful ruminations.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez discusses the action-oriented culture in the United States and its benefits, but also it’s disadvantages, namely our quest for answers rather than questions:

Quick access to facts has made us too impatient to engage in lengthy deliberation, ‘deep inquiry’ or discernment. In her new book, ‘The Death of Why?,’ Batista Schlesinger -- until recently, the executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy in New York -- makes a passionate case for inquiry qua inquiry. She links the future of the American experiment to the extent to which we teach our children how to ask questions.

And L.A. Times K-12 Education Editor Beth Shuster notes a success in the Los Angeles Unified School District: the graduation ceremony at Cleveland High School, where parents cheered for their child as the first in their family to receive a diploma, the more than 40 students who earned a 4.0 or above, and the student who constructed a rap for his graduation speech.
On the Editorial side of the fold, healthcare reform dominates. In a continuing series that looks at the most egregious problems with the healthcare system, today’s installment focuses on costs and how they can be responsibly cut:

There’s much that remains unknown about how best to treat various illnesses and injuries, and each new drug or device that’s developed raises new questions about effectiveness. There are significant issues too about how to enforce such guidelines. But the development of ‘best practices’ could help doctors by providing a shield against malpractice claims, reducing the incidence of wasteful tests and other ‘defensive’ procedures.

Other suggestions include bundling health care payments into a lump sum and providing incentives for both physicians and insurers to practice in a cost-effective manner.

Finally, the editorial board lambastes a move by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to prohibit owners of rent-controlled apartment buildings from raising rents beyond a third of a tenant’s income, saying it would make landlords ‘an unwilling agency of social welfare.’