Just over 10 years ago this week, we wrote on this page that the Bush administration’s push toward an invasion of Iraq might do more to harm the cause of world peace than advance it. History has borne out the fears of many (if far too few in national positions of authority or in control of major media) that the war was unjustified, unwise, and a waste of untold lives. And now, as the Obama White House continues its infatuation with unmanned drones, killing not just terrorists but United States citizens and unarmed noncombatants, it is worth remembering that violence begets more violence.

    In the Feb. 13, 2003, issue of this newspaper we wrote: “If the objective is to assert power in the oil-rich region and remake the Arab world in our image, then invasion may be necessary. Given that the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda presented by [Colin] Powell was speculative, terrorism cannot be a justification for putting our troops at risk, increasing the threat to other Mideast countries, and killing Iraqi civilians . . . it now seems nearly impossible that war, with its attendant carnage and regional destabilization, will be avoided.”

    We, and those who shared this view, were right in the end. The Iraq war has been decried as the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history. One thing we were wrong about, however, was a hope that the war might be over quickly. Our last major troop deployments in Iraq ended in late 2011, but the havoc caused continues on. Whether we as a nation learned anything at all remains impossible to gauge.

   An announcement Monday by Suffolk Legislator Jay Schneiderman that he will not be a candidate for East Hampton Town supervisor comes as something of a disappointment. Knowing the headaches of the job all too well from his two terms in the post before winning a county seat, Mr. Schneiderman may well have been shrewd to opt out of a bid for the Republican nomination. This apparently leaves the local G.O.P. without an obvious choice since the incumbent supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, has not been screened by the committee and, in any event, appears unelectable, having only narrowly regained the post last year — by 15 votes — and then proceeded to continue his scorched-earth policies as if he had all the mandate in the world.

    It is likely that Mr. Schneiderman would have given the presumptive Democratic committee choice, Larry Cantwell, a meaningful challenge. Mr. Cantwell, a former town councilman and 30-year East Hampton Village administrator, has a far longer record of public service than Mr. Schneiderman. But Mr. Schneiderman, whose Town Hall years were distinguished by the absence of controversy, has no doubt gained experience and savvy in his six terms as a legislator. The exchange of ideas in a campaign between the men is likely to have been civil and at a level of credibility not seen recently.

    Either candidate, if victorious in November, would likely have been able to right the badly listing ship that is East Hampton Town government. A further example of how dysfunctional things have become emerged this week when the Suffolk Planning Commission cautioned those backing a harebrained scheme to change from residential to business the Cyril’s Fish House property and an adjacent vacant parcel on Napeague. The commission bluntly said that the shift would be illegal “spot zoning.” Making things worse, the vacant parcel is on the town’s preservation want-list and has a protected environmental classification. This echoes an ongoing controversy in which the town improperly dug a drainage pit on property in open defiance of the fact that the development rights had been bought by the county years ago. If nothing else, the outcome of a contest between Mr. Cantwell and Mr. Schneiderman would have been one in which steady competency was assured and these kind of debacles averted

    Faced with no obvious fall-back person, the town Republican committee would do well to take its time before settling on a candidate. As we have said in previous editorials, the challenges facing the next generation of men and women in Town Hall may be the greatest ever arrayed. These include coping with rising sea level, assuring groundwater and environmental protections, controlling development, managing growth, and reducing political influence on appointed boards. Oh, and don’t forget the public nuisance that East Hampton Airport continues to be.

    Only the best qualified people should be considered by the respective nominating committees. This very special place we call home deserves no less.

   As most anyone who has walked on the bay or ocean beaches here in the last week or so will attest, the past few decades’ development of our shoreline has finally, inevitably, run smack up against the almighty, eternal power of Mother Nature. That the challenges presented by the dual threats of intense coastal storms and rising sea level are daunting is an understatement. Dealing with the policy implications and the delicate balance between the public’s right to access the shore, the rights of private-property interests, and the interests of taxpayers will be incredibly difficult.

    As of this writing, details are few regarding a plan being prepared by an ad-hoc, volunteer committee for downtown Montauk. What has been said in public is that the Montauk oceanfront-hotel owners — very understandably desperate, and fighting for survival — want millions from the federal government’s Hurricane Sandy relief bill to build a sea wall, which would then supposedly be kept covered with sand paid for either through a special taxing district or in some form of public-private partnership.

    Making the notion of a Montauk wall appear tempting, however, is an estimated $750 million in post-Sandy money now set aside for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Fire Island to Montauk project. Though the corps has said that widening the beach and increasing the height of dunes may be the way to go, the funding from the relief bill will be spread over an 83-mile stretch — and will not last forever. At any rate, “hard” solutions, such as a wall or dune with a rock core, as may be in the so-far withheld committee plan, are not likely to gain regulatory approval anyway after the required environmental analysis is completed, so the sooner that idea is scrapped the better.

    Now, this wall-and-sand concept might work. But, then again, it might not. It will take better minds than ours — or those of any amateur — to determine if it would be the best choice. Which is why we believe the East Hampton Town Board, which chose the unpaid committee members, should immediately consult the very best academic and independent experts on coastal processes (and studiously avoid any of the snake-oil peddlers who now make a fine living from one scheme of “beach restoration” or another).

    Beyond Montauk, town agencies have, meanwhile, been handing out so-called emergency permits for work on private revetments and bulkheads at a rate that makes thorough environmental review of their impacts impossible.

    And then there are the town trustees, who are said to be looking into whether their authority has been usurped in some cases. It’s a mess, and no one appears to truly be in charge.

     Would condemning the shore-most row of Montauk structures and replacing them with a resilient dune line prove a more effective and beneficial plan for the future of that hamlet than building a wall? Until the experts are heard from, we just don’t know.

   East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson famously once said, “We are the most transparent.” His point, of course, was that Town Hall during his tenure, in his view, has been going above and beyond the open-government mandate. Perhaps in one sense, if not the one intended, what he said was perfectly true: However loud the clamor and din in local politics, it has always been easy to discern the ideology-before-constituents philosophy behind much of what Mr. Wilkinson does. His motives and beliefs have never been obscured.

    But we certainly hope the next town board, when they are sworn in come January, will try rather harder to make East Hampton Town leadership (across party lines) more upfront about what they are actually doing, and that they will honestly dedicate themselves to compliance with the state Freedom of Information Law.

    For the past several weeks, we have been writing about some of the yardsticks by which the respective East Hampton nominating committees might evaluate prospective candidates. As the tops of the tickets appear to be solidifying, voters will want to keep tabs on where the hopefuls stand on the big-ticket items: sea-level rise, the rule of law, civility, and the principle of allowing town employees to do their jobs free of political interference. Then, as suggested above, comes the issue of open government: Will a candidate ensure that policy-making is done in the public view, and that the wishes of taxpayers and residents are taken into better consideration?

    Consider these areas of concern, from the past few years, relating to open government: Freedom of Information requests unanswered; a code enforcement department that refuses to share details about its day-to-day performance; last-minute circulation of board agendas; hasty and ill-thought-out mass-gathering approvals, and precipitous, highly charged “walk-on” resolutions at town meetings.

    As for listening-to-the-public problems, consider: the elimination of leaf pickup, the putative sale of Fort Pond House in Montauk, the lunatic notion of down-zoning the seasonally out-of-control bar crowd at Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague, and the airport decision, which affects thousands of residents across four townships.

    Government in the United States, particularly at the town and village level, is a cooperative and collaborative undertaking between elected leaders and those they lead. Have you attended an East Hampton Town Board meeting (or watched one on LTV) in recent years? They are, in our opinion, a prime example of how not to cooperate and collaborate. November’s office-seekers need to do more than simply mouth the phrases “open government,” “commitment to transparency,” and “respect for constituents.”

   With a strongly worded letter from the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, the East Hampton Town Board cannot now assume that a plan to make a host of legal problems disappear at Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague — and allow the seasonally overcrowded business to grow — has much, if any, public support. Nonetheless, the board is set to go ahead with a public hearing tonight on an ill-advised scheme to downzone the parcel on which the bar and restaurant sits and an undeveloped lot next door from a residential to business classification. Its only evident backer is Tina Piette, a prominent Amagansett lawyer formerly active with the town Republican Party.

    The town code is unequivocal: Nonconforming businesses like Cyril’s, which predate the adoption of zoning, are allowed to continue as long as they are not expanded. Strict review is supposed to be triggered when anything requiring a building permit is proposed for such properties, though in practice, the town has failed on many occasions to hold owners to that. In the case of Cyril’s, town records show more than a dozen structures added to the site without approval. By one count, as many as 26 zoning variances would be needed only to bring what already has been done there into legal compliance.

    The big problem with Cyril’s is not simply that it has expanded illegally, or that its owners want it to grow even more, it is that the town code does not have adequate provisions to control how it functions in the real world. Of a sunny summer Saturday afternoon, hundreds of patrons mill around its gravel parking lot and within the state highway right-of-way as they try to elbow their way to the bar. Forget about the seats and the seafood menu; this is all about hanging out with friends over a Bailey’s or a cream daiquiri or two.

    By late afternoon, as people leave the beach, vehicles can stretch far down both sides of Montauk Highway. Passing drivers slow and stare in amazement as mostly young patrons work their way along the shoulders. Double and triple-parked taxis make conditions even more dangerous. By early morning, Cyril’s plastic drink cups remain as unsightly reminders of the last evening’s revelry.

    Instead of considering how to reward Cyril’s owners for mocking town laws, the town board should look for ways to curb the numbers of outdoor patrons such establishments can host at any one time. The last time this question came up, however, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley proposed a wildly generous outdoor occupancy calculation that would have made things worse by allowing one guest for every seven square feet of usable space. As many as 1,400 bodies would have been permitted on a quarter-acre lawn, for example.

    The Cyril’s Fish House proposition now before the town is without merit. Why the board even agreed to consider it is, frankly, a mystery.

   In the last several weeks, The Star has begun offering a laundry list of some of the qualifications candidates for East Hampton Town office must have to merit serious consideration in the November election. Our previous calls were for bringing civility back to Town Hall, demonstrating the vision to take on climate change, and, in general, restoring the rule of law.

    Here is another: The candidates and the parties that back them must demonstrate willingness to allow town employees to do their jobs free of political interference. To do this, the next town board will have to do some rethinking.

    Ideally, local governments in New York State are supposed to be set up with an elected board and a separate staff. The board sets policy by passing laws and appropriating money; the staff carries out its work as described in local laws. In the Town of East Hampton in recent years, however, the line has become blurred. One top town department official said recently that she had “five bosses,” meaning the five-person town board rather than the 20,000-something town residents.

    There are stories of board members marching into the Building Department to tell the inspectors how to rule on one application or another. Then there was the time when Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigsley plunked themselves down in the front row at a planning board meeting and then got into a tiff with several of its members over procedure. The message in that instance, and in many others, was clear: Do things our way.

    Curing the ills in East Hampton Town Hall will take confident leadership. Key among necessary reforms will be cultivating an independent town attorney’s office whose staff has the clear mission of providing the best legal advice to all town departments. Instead, since the resignation of Laura Molinari, in 2008 during the early days of the McGintee administration financial scandal, the attorney’s office has drifted. It seemed to be scrambling to provide cover for the supervisor and his dwindling supporters’ questionable pet projects.

    A strong legal department made up of staff whose careers are not on the line if they cross an elected official is essential. Providing oversight to the Building Department, on whose sometimes seat-of-the-pants rulings millions of dollars can rest, will go a long way toward avoiding many of the legal quagmires that have been in the news.

    Also key will be taking on the two-men-in-a-room nature of budget preparation. Town residents saw how bad things could become when Bill McGintee’s budget officer, Ted Hults, improperly moved money around to cover gaps, which led to expensive deficit-financing through bonds and state supervision of the town’s books. Rather than adopt a stronger system of checks and balances, however, the town during the Wilkinson administration moved to hand more authority to the budget officer — whose job as a political appointee is at the pleasure of the town board majority at all times. Contrast this with the way school boards are required to hold public work sessions in creating budgets and ultimately to take them to voters for approval.

    These town governance problems are not new. One solution suggested has been to create a town manager’s post. We are hesitant to support this, as it could consolidate power and put residents at a greater remove from government. Instead, at least for the foreseeable future, the town’s generally fine department heads should be allowed to do their jobs, hewing to the town code with the community’s best interests as their guide.

   One of the weirder disputes to bubble up in the lengthy history of animus between the East Hampton Town Trustees and the town board came to light two weeks ago with the disclosure that Town Hall had sent the trustees a bill for cutting up and hauling away a dead whale after it washed up on the beach on Jan. 13. Though the affair is odd at several levels, it may have a hidden benefit for the trustees, one that may make them actually eager to cover the $7,500 cost even though they had nothing to do with it.

    The beef is over who authorized removal of the stinking, 58-foot carcass. The trustees said they were not consulted. It turned out that someone else, perhaps in the town’s Highway or Police Department, gave a local land-moving contractor the green light to take on the heavy job. According to one of the trustees, a different company, with whom they had already been doing business, had offered to do the deed without charge.

    Just why Town Hall thought it had the responsibility to deal with the problem in the first place is a bit of a mystery. Finback whales are federally protected, and this particular one came to rest on the tidal portion of the beach, placing it within state jurisdiction.

    So, was the cost of disposing of that whale Albany’s or Washington’s problem? It’s difficult to say. The 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Law prohibits the possession of whale parts. And, as an animal on the endangered species list, its ignominious end, at an out-of-town garbage incinerator, might have raised questions. At least the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, which acts as the feds’ representative in such matters here, should have straightened out who would be handed the tab before its team left the beach.

     All of the foregoing aside, the payoff for the trustees is that by handing them the bill, Town Hall is further acknowledging their proprietary ownership of the ocean beach. And that may well be worth the money.

   In recent editions The Star has suggested priorities that should be on the respective political parties’ wish lists as they narrow their choices for candidates in East Hampton Town’s November election. Last week we said town leaders must show the ability to deal with preparing for climate change; the week before we talked about civility — particularly in Town Hall, which has devolved into a hissing pit of vendetta-nursing and vituperation. Today we consider the rule of law.

    Close readers can hardly have missed the recurring theme at East Hampton Town Hall, which has drifted into something like quasi-legality with Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his closest ally, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, figuring in far too many questionable things. For too long, perhaps, town residents were willing to give their shenanigans a pass since they were, after all, correcting a mess left by prior Town Supervisor Bill McGintee and feckless town board members, who ran up an unconscionable and huge internal debt by improperly shuffling money among town accounts. Now, however, looking to the future, voters must ask more of the parties and the people they put forward for town office, as well as those who will be named to the town’s zoning, planning, and other appointed boards.

     A couple of examples: From the outset, Mr. Wilkinson’s administration appeared to act outside the law in seeking to sell Fort Pond House in Montauk, despite strict state prohibitions on the casual jettisoning of parkland. Later, the town board approved a giant music festival on residential land in Amagansett with only cursory review and the acquiescence of the top town attorney, who counted the property’s owner among his handful of outside clients.

    This week attention was drawn to a lawsuit brought by an Amagansett property who had sought to overturn a town zoning board rejection but who amazingly won by default when the town failed to answer in court. In a November 2010 decision, the judge in the case wrote that East Hampton Town had “no intention to have the controversy on its merits.” No one has explained how or why the town attorney’s office did not respond, though speculation is spreading that it might have been by design.

    More recently, Mr. Wilkinson gave the go-ahead to several shoreline-protection measures that were outside the scope of his authority. He also appointed to an advisory committee a friend and local contractor who was partly responsible for the largest-ever fine by the tidal wetlands division of the State Department of Environmental Conservation. Lately, too, ordinance enforcers have essentially ignored whole sections of the town code, including those on signs, clearing, and outdoor illumination.

    In terms of land-use regulation, the record has been equally disturbing. The East Hampton Town Board has stood by idly as several major projects successfully evaded proper review. Moreover, in two egregious examples, that of the Dunes substance-abuse center in Northwest Woods and the Beach House hotel-cum-nightclub in Montauk, the supervisor was an early backer despite obvious questions about the projects’ compliance with town law. Then there is the issue of the East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan and the separate Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, both of which have been routinely laughed off in recent years although they were the result of many hundreds of hours of effort and carry the force of law on matters large and small.

    Lest you think this is but history, next Thursday the town board is to consider changing the zoning of Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague from residential to commercial, even though the comprehensive plan flatly calls for restricting development along Montauk Highway there and one of the two parcels is included on the town’s list of properties eligible for open space preservation.

    Changing course in Town Hall must start at the top. The victorious candidates for town board and supervisor will have their work cut out for them. Well before Nov. 5, however, they must tell voters just exactly how they intend to set things right.

   Last week we wrote that a prerequisite for office-seekers in the November election must be a demonstrated ability to be civil. This week we would like to bring attention to climate change and sea-level rise.

    At this point all but a narrowing fringe agree that climate change is a pressing danger, especially in coastal communities like ours. Erosion, already a fact of life along these shores, is predicted to accelerate over time. The number and intensity of storms are expected to rise as well, putting Long Island at increased risk of catastrophe.

    One can argue about the causes and number of degrees the global temperature is likely to rise, but the fact remains that the vast preponderance of climate scientists agree that the threat is real — and coming fast.

    To some degree, state and federal governments have begun to act and have come up with recommendations. However, at the local level, at which most land-use decisions are made, the response has been unsatisfactory. Elected and appointed officials in both East Hampton and Southampton Towns have generally clung to outdated line-in-the-sand approaches, hoping they can hold back the sea. Even now policies are being made in the absence of expert advice and boards are simply going along with those who have vested interest in a particular outcome. Answering the challenges ahead will require much more.

    As local nominating committees consider candidates for the November elections, they should agree to put forward those with a demonstrable grasp of the science underlying global warming. Leaders must ignore the clouded thinking of the conspiracists who deny it. Also important will be the candidates’ willingness to work with the best available people to prepare the region for the long haul. Political hopefuls who do not articulate sound vision for meeting this massive challenge will not be worthy of voter support.

   Another oddball case reached the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals this week. (Ever notice how the most controversial ones tend to be scheduled for the depths of February?) The question put before the board Tuesday was whether the Dunes, a high-priced, inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in a residential neighborhood in Northwest Woods, can continue to operate legally as a semi-public facility without a town permit. The town’s top building inspector says it cannot; the Dunes’s lawyers say the question is irrelevant. And in this controversy, we get a glimpse, once again, of just how dysfunctional the town’s land-use oversight has become.

    First, what the town code allows:

    The Dunes, which opened in 2010, occupies residentially zoned land, on which only single-family houses are approved as a matter of course. More intensive uses of residential property are permissible only after exhaustive review, and they are subject to strict limits. As set out in the regulations, single-family houses are to be lived in by their owners or rented to others (although not groups) not more than two times in a calendar year. Home offices and limited “home occupations” are okay, too, as are the rentals of one or two guest rooms or an apartment — provided the property owner lives there too. Semi-public facilities can occupy residential sites as well, but only if they are approved by either the town zoning or planning boards or both and obtain a permit. Semi-public buildings are defined in the code as ­churches, old-age homes, museums, schools, clinics, and hospitals, among similar things. 

    Next, what the Dunes says it does, according to press reports and its own Web site and releases:

    It is an upscale addiction-recovery center occupying some 7,300 square feet of space, providing meals prepared by an on-site chef, and sleeping accommodations for up to 16 patients at a time. It boasts a 3-to-1 “staff-to-client” ratio, and it offers psychiatry, spiritual counseling, art therapy, acupuncture, and legal advice, along with in-house housekeepers, laundry personnel, and drivers. Clients can be whisked from regional airports by private car to the center, where they are admitted and given a battery of physical and psychological exams, according to the Dunes’s Web site. Stays can run from 30 days up to three months at a cost said to run about $45,000 a month, according to a Bloomberg Business Week story in which the  founder was quoted. A course of treatment of 90 days has been described as the preference of the center’s directors. The property owners, as best we can tell, rent the site to the rehab’s operators and live elsewhere.

    Complicating things is a federal discrimination lawsuit, now temporarily on hold, brought by the Dunes against the town over the building inspector’s reversal of an earlier determination, which gave it the green light. The building inspector has claimed that the facility’s initial application for a building permit made false statements about its scope and nature of operations by stating that its clients would live there together as a family for no fewer than 11 months a year. Adding to the bizarre aspects of all this, the Dunes had written support early on, when gaining its state license to operate as a substance abuse clinic, from East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, John Jilnicki, the town attorney, and East Hampton Town Police Chief Eddie Ecker.

    Separately, a group of neighbors has organized against the Dunes, protesting the clinic’s noise, traffic, landscaping, and even “loud outdoor therapy sessions.” The opponents point out on their Web site that this kind of unauthorized business could appear anywhere in the Town of East Hampton without revitalized zoning enforcement. They are right, of course. The fact that the rehabilitation center has continued to operate undermines the credibility of the town’s land-use rules.

    It will be surprising if the zoning board does not uphold the building inspector’s ruling that further review is needed. But in this town, these days, anything is possible.