On the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Times' editorial board asks a question with no easy answer: Should we consider our conflict with terrorists a war or a police action?

Preventing another attack on the homeland isn't a war, it's a security challenge. It's not so much a question of "winning" this conflict, which will be with us until the Islamic extremism movement fades away, as it is deciding when it ceases to be a so-called war on terror and becomes a fight against terrorism.

Today also happens to be the 35th anniversary of the coup led by Chilean army General Augusto Pinochet, which overthrew the country's elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende. Former dissident Heraldo Muñoz, now Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, offers an even-handed appraisal of Pinochet's legacy as a free-market reformer, as well as the U.S. role in his rise to power:

The real economic miracle occurred after Pinochet, between 1990 and 2007, when his reforms were legitimized and improved through democratic debate and consensus. Successive governments also made many of those reforms more palatable with heavy social investment to help those left behind during the Pinochet era. As a result, growth rates almost doubled those of the preceding three decades, and poverty was cut by more than half.

Also in Op-Ed land, scholar Timothy Garton Ash warns of a "new world disorder" that is proving to be more of a global political phenomenon than Islamofascism -- and no less a challenge to the U.S. and other liberal democratic nations. Finally, bringing the focus back to domestic affairs, columnist Rosa Brooks writes about the economic advantages of beauty, real or surgically obtained. (Yes, she does work Sarah Palin into her column. She can't help herself.)

(For a balanced and thought-provoking debate over various Palin-related topics, check out this week's Dust-Up between Reason magazine's Katherine Mangu-Ward and blogger/author Amanda Marcotte.)

Elsewhere on the editorial page, the board calls for a public debate over the schools' role in promoting the arts and other social goods, and it urges L.A. city and county officials to step up preparations for the digital TV transition.

Coming back from a recent visit to Iraq, scholars Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl warn that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is endangering the recent progress made by cracking down on the U.S.-financed Sunni forces called the Sons of Iraq:

During our trip, a common theme among U.S. military commanders, intelligence officers, diplomats and Iraqi political leaders we spoke with was the growing hubris of Maliki and his closest advisors. Recent government successes in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul seem to have convinced Maliki's inner circle that Iraq's army does not need American help as much as it used to. A newly emboldened prime minister is now moving out aggressively against his adversaries, including the Sons of Iraq.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg takes a break from his weekly critiques of Barack Obama's fitness for the presidency, opining instead on how the choice of Joe Biden reveals the emptiness of Obama's "new politics." And James Kirchick, an assistant editor of the New Republic, laments how Jonathan Crutchley, the openly gay founder of a dating site for gay men, was hounded by his customers for having donated to John McCain's campaign.

Over on the left-hand page, the editorial board implored the Hollywood studios to resume negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild, and it called on state lawmakers to pass a bill clarifying workers' rights under state law to bring gender-discrimination claims against their employers. Finally, it reflected on the return China earned from its $41 billion investment in the Olympics. For starters, there was a bounty of gold medals.

Yet what planners in Beijing miscalculated is that no matter how well you teach performers to smile, the strain behind the lips is still detectable. The near-hysterical drive by Chinese leaders to put on the biggest, most spectacular sporting event ever, and to engineer a generation of Chinese medalists regardless of the financial or human costs, is rather more disconcerting to the outside world than convincing.

Anxious cartoon by Scott Stantis, USA Today.

Tuesday's letter writers sound off on Times coverage of tensions between Russia and Georgia, John Edwards' affair, Sacramento lobbyists and why some people don't love Paris in the summer.

Olympics fan Lisa Bock, of Santa Monica, takes issue with Bill Plaschke's review of the Beijing opening ceremonies, writing:

The heat must have gone to Bill Plaschke’s head when he wrote his critique of the Beijing opening ceremony...Plaschke’s statement that "this show lacked real smiles, true laughter, visible heart" did not describe the ceremony I watched.

Maybe he had a bad seat.

*Photo: Michael Czerwonka/EPA

Presidential hopeful John McCain is the star of Monday's Letters to the Editor, as readers react to his plans to promote nuclear power (and to the editorial board's take on them) and to a report about his advisor, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.  Writes Kim Monson, of San Pedro:

If he gets his economic advice from people like Phil "Americans are whiners" Gramm and Carly "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore" Fiorina, then corporate elitism will be alive and well in a McCain administration.

USC's outspoken dean of architecture, Saturday shutdowns at the DMV, militant animal rights activists and a busy shrink, too.

*Photo: Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

In Sunday's Letters to the Editor, readers commiserate with television writer Ellie Herman's op-ed about the trials and tribulations of enrolling--yes, merely enrolling--in courses to earn her teaching credentials. Laments former teacher Larry Zeiger, of San Diego, who fought his own credentials battle:

My patience, like Herman's, was tested by a deplorable, frustrating and insensitive bureaucratic system that will only lead to mediocrity as more and more bright, energetic and creative teachers seek careers elsewhere.

Thoughts on China and the Olympics, farmworkers vs.farm animals, gay marriage and a courageous veteran, too.

*Photo: Rick Loomis/TPN

Neither columnist Rosa Brooks nor The Times' editorial board is too impressed with the military commission conviction Wednesday of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who confessed to being Osama bin Laden's driver. Brooks wonders if regular federal courts could do a better job of putting the really bad guys (as opposed to those who chauffeur the bad guys) in prison for good:

But are these guys really the worst of the worst, evil terrorist masterminds who so threaten "the continuity of the operations of the United States government" that they couldn't possibly be tried in U.S. civilian courts?

After 6 1/2 years -- after detaining hundreds of people at Guantanamo, after trying interrogation techniques adapted from the Chinese and the KGB, after countless protests from the International Committee for the Red Cross, after alienating close allies and creating a cause celebre for our enemies -- have the military commissions really been worth it? ....

Odds are, if the administration had stuck to the tried and true federal court system, it'd be home now -- and most of the Guantanamo detainees suspected of serious crimes would have been tried and convicted by now too.

The editorial board laments that Hamdan's military trial "fell short of the highest traditions of American justice," given that he wouldn't be set free even if his appeals are successful:

As an enemy combatant, the Pentagon has said, Hamdan and others so designated can be incarcerated until the end of the so-called war on terror. (Hamdan can appeal the verdict under the Military Commissions Act and might also benefit from a Supreme Court decision in June granting habeas corpus rights to detainees, though that decision involved prisoners who had not received a trial.)

This page has argued repeatedly that, given the length of the confinement of detainees at Guantanamo and the open-endedness of the war on terrorism, it would be preferable to try accused terrorists in the civilian judicial system, where an expeditious trial is guaranteed. That system, it should be remembered, produced the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik" accused of plotting to bomb the United Nations, and a life sentence for Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. But if Congress and the administration insist on maintaining a separate judicial system to try alleged terrorists, it needs to be fairer and more transparent, and an acquittal must mean more than a return trip to a prison cell.

Also on the editorial page, the board assails John McCain for his nuclear-based energy plan (which it calls "an insult to voters' intelligence") and offers cautious praise for a new state law that requires convicted taggers to scrub away their mess:

Judges must be careful. In the upside-down culture of the street, removing graffiti can be deemed a sign of disrespect and draw deadly retaliation from criminal gangs. Taggers can and should be punished -- but not with their lives.

Before we get too entirely riled up about China rousting its beggars, pickpockets and, most recently, its petitioners from the streets of Beijing in an attempt to pretty up the city's image for the Olympics, let's take a quiz. When does this headline date from?

"City Polishing Its Image For Olympic Visitors"

If you guessed 1984, you are a smart reader who looked at the title to this blogpost. The Los Angeles Times story from July 21, 1984, about preparations for our own Summer Games, starts out like this:

"Los Angeles police have added 30 horse-mounted officers downtown and stepped up their stopping nd questioning of Skid Row homeless in an effort to clean up the city in time for the Olympics....Many of the homeless--most often drunks, the mentally ill or others down on their luck--have apparently relocated to other downtown areas to escape the police pressure."

It goes on to quote a police captain saying, memorably, "We're trying to sanitize the area."

Certainly, nothing on the same scale as Beijing is attempting. But among our memories of the tremendously successful Summer Games, let's not forget to include a sliver of embarrassment about the people we tried to sweep aside.

*Photo:  TEH ENG KOON / AFP / Getty Images

The editorial board hasn't been among Antonio Villaraigosa's biggest fans -- it's that whole overpromise, underdeliver thing. Today, the board almost rises to the mayor's defense on the issue of the garbage-fee increase, noting that critics "should know better" than to complain about part of the money being used to pay Police Department expenses rather than to hire more cops. But then the board comes to its senses, arguing that "the anger and sense of betrayal are [Villaraigosa's] own fault."

The board also voices some early skepticism about the sudden increase in a proposed bond issue for city schools:

Leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District have much to explain about how a $3.2-billion bond proposal, considered perfectly adequate two weeks ago, more than doubled in size, pumped up with blurry references to future, unspecified projects. And they won't have to explain that just to voters, but possibly to the state's lawyers.

Rounding out the page, the board laments the many ways in which Beijing isn't ready for its Olympic moment, and letter writers weigh in on the Times' investigative series about fighting California's wildfires, energy policy, the increase in hate crimes and the IRS crackdown on cellphone expense deductions.   

The Times was ahead of its time three years ago, when an editorial predicting the imminent demise of the SUV included a list of useful suggestions on what people could do with the gas-guzzling behemoths now that nobody wanted to drive them anymore (sample: Sink them offshore as artificial reefs). Reports of the SUV's demise were premature, but then gas prices started their astonishing climb. If the SUV hasn't quite flatlined, it's got a roomful of worried auto makers gathered around its bed while their stock analysts are calling for a priest. Unfortunately, though, the steel-and-rubber corpses aren't going to get a decent burial as artificial reefs. They're going to end up spreading pollution and inflating gasoline prices in the developing world.

Reuters is reporting that General Motors is in talks with Indian auto maker Mahindra & Mahindra, as well as other companies in Russia and China, about unloading its disastrous Hummer brand. In places like China where gasoline is subsidized, it's not unreasonable to think the nouveau riche might appreciate a tank-sized symbol of excess like the Hummer. But what happens to carbon emissions and oil prices when a big percentage of the 2.45 billion people in China and India start driving? Especially if they're driving 15-mile-per-gallon monstrosities? It's little wonder that speculators are excited about oil futures, because even as high prices prompt Americans to conserve gas and reduce demand, newly wealthy populations in Russia and China are shielded from rising prices by the government and have less reason to cut back. Hence GM might find a buyer for a brand that nobody in the industrialized world would touch.

There may have once been a time when what was good for GM was good for the country. But if selling Hummer to China or an Indian manufacturer is good for GM, it's bad for everybody on Earth. Better to turn those old Hummers into planter boxes, or, as The Times suggested in 2005, make them into "hot tubs with comfortable seating."

*Photo: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press

You've probably heard a thing or two about China's woman shortage, and the roles that the "Market-Communist" Republic's one-child policy and old timey woman hatred have played in bringing that shortage about. But now, in opinion journalism's answer to "Class of Nuke 'Em High," The New Republic's Mara Hvistendahl puts drooling, sideburned, knuckledragging flesh on the raw statistics. It's not just that there are too many young men; it's that they're dangerous delinquents who play soldier with (illegal, naturally) air rifles!

The macho violence spurting forth through outlets like war games is a growing trend in Chinese society--and China's one-child policy, in effect since 1979, is partly responsible. The country's three decades of iron-fisted population planning coincided with a binge in sex-selective abortions (Chinese traditionally favor sons, who carry on the family line) and a rise, even as the country developed, in female infant mortality. After almost 30 years of the policy, China now has the largest gender imbalance in the world, with 37 million more men than women and almost 20 percent more newborn boys than girls nationwide.

I smell a buried lede. No doubt somebody somewhere has at some point put his or her eye out with a BB gun, but this business about a rise in female infant mortality seems a good deal more alarming than the utterly unremarkable news that boys and men are aggressive morons. (You may counter that female infant mortality in China is not news at all, and that it's been known for centuries that people will abort, murder or abandon girl babies solely on the basis of their gender. But then that just shows that the creepiest customs are the ones that are generally tolerated.)

And how much does a 37-million-person gender gap actually amount to in a population of 1.33 billion? It's enough, as my old friend Jacob Sullum has explained, to create a market distortion in favor of child-hungry couples in the West. But when Hvistendahl heads out to see some of these children in action, the evidence is less astounding than you'd think:

Lianyungang, a booming port city in a Jiangsu province economic belt, is ground zero for some of these changes. According to the China Family Planning Association, it's the city in China with the most extreme gender ratio for children under four--163 boys for every 100 girls. One sunny Saturday morning at verdant Cangwu Park, I count six boys and three girls bouncing on the inflatable castle. Near the ice-cream stand are a dozen sticky-faced kids, seven boys and five girls, feeding pigeons. The children running after kites adorned with Olympics mascots and China's Shenzhou VII spaceship: three and two. The drivers of the cheerful little tanks circling an electric track: three and one.

A three-to-two gender gap among child kite flyers? The obvious eventual solution to that problem will have to be widespread acceptance of polyandry (the true mark of an evolved society). But as it happens, the Worker's Paradise has already ruled against that idea. So again, the only solution is violence:

Two years ago in Nanjing, Jiangsu's capital, businessman Wu Gang opened the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in a cheap hotel near the bank of the Yangtze River. The bar featured staples of Chinese entertainment like big-screen karaoke and plates of sunflower seeds but also a central catwalk where, for 100 yuan ($15) per minute, customers paid to assault the waiters, single young migrants from poorer cities to the north. If a customer preferred, his victim would dress in drag.

You know, in any other publication, I'd say this whole anecdote sounds fishy. But since it's The New Republic, I'll accept that somewhere in Nanjing there's a three-block-long line of applicants for waiter jobs. (They don't actually want to dress up in women's clothing and be manhandled by beefy young men, but you've gotta earn a living in this tough economy!)

History will judge the People's Republic of China harshly for its grotesque experiment in population control. Someday it may judge all of humanity harshly for our failure to breed out the Y chromosome and end the tyrannny of pampered princelings over better, smarter, higher-performing girls once and for all. In the meantime, it's best to take your sociology — and your "Wild In the Streets"-style cautionary tales about uncontrollable youths — with a grain of salt.

Courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily.