Council: Fix Local ‘War’

The Los Angeles City Council deadlocked Tuesday on a proclamation opposing war in Iraq without United Nations backing. Meanwhile, the “war” here at home claimed another casualty. A 17-year-old girl shooting hoops at a city park in South Los Angeles caught a bullet in the head when three people in a gold Chevrolet fired at another car. She’s in critical condition. The council takes up Iraq again today.

City governments don’t set foreign policy. That’s why taking a position on war in Iraq is a cakewalk for council members compared with doing something about the gangsters and others who blast away nightly in this city. Council members who merely send an antiwar message will bask in applause. Wrestling with such problems as gangs, mentally ill folks living on sidewalks, the police officer shortage and gridlock is hard work that is seldom rewarded with gratifying chants of solidarity.

As Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents downtown’s skid row, told her colleagues, “I want to see this same passion when I want to save the lives of veterans who make their homes on the sidewalks.”

Perry, along with five other council members, endured jeers and boos to vote against the resolution because she couldn’t see spending city time on symbols when so much of substance cries out to be done.

Councilman Eric Garcetti, who wrote the resolution and spent who-knows-how-much time mustering support for it, says because war in Iraq would cost money that could be spent on jobs and anti-gang programs, it is indeed a city issue. Even some of those who oppose further U.N. patience in disarming Iraq might agree with that point -- though they’d no doubt counter that a few stray vials of Saddam Hussein’s anthrax could have a more deleterious economic effect on L.A.

We think the City Council would have given all its constituents more effective service by reminding them how to contact the elected officials who do have a say in foreign policy (boxer.senate.gov/contact, feinstein .senate.gov, www.house.gov) and then quickly getting back to the city’s problems -- including its own “war.”