I'm not ready for the anniversary of Sept. 11. I haven't figured out yet how best to observe the memory of the 3,000 who died that day.

        They were strangers to me. Yet my heart still aches for their families.

        My stomach clenches when I see photos of New York's denuded skyline or hear stories about heroism in the skies over Pennsylvania.

        I still don't feel a sense of closure.

        How much worse for the survivors, children left without a parent, adults whose collective bereavement is still not enough?

        Each day, they must strategize just to get through, perhaps leaving their private grieving to when they're alone, in the evenings, perhaps at home.

        With all the public concerts and memorials last year, the millions of dollars raised to help survivors, the nearly miraculous cleanup helping New York get on with life 1/2ndash 3/4 I wonder, do the survivors feel we've turned a corner?

        We're at least facing the pain. Have you checked the TV listings lately? There's a national broadcast build-up of Sept. 11 TV specials. How will they - will we - get through it?

        So many factors still leave our wound festering.

A nation's "to do' list

        If only we'd caught Osama bin Laden. He's rumored to be hiding in Pakistan. Our failure to arrest him - more than any other victory or blunder so far - has formed the bedrock of my bitterness.

        I care less about how many high-ranking or not-so-high-ranking Taliban we capture, how many terrorist cells we uncover.

        My measure of justice rests on the fate of one man.

        That subtext dims my view of our nation's other efforts to wield worldwide influence.

        We're itching to invade Iraq, but we haven't made a sufficient case about the dangers that country is spawning to rally the world behind us.

        Some of our international friends, countries that stood with us in our sorrow, are turning their backs on us now. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, China, Germany - shame on them for their shallow support, for the lost progress.

        Some of those governments are back to old tricks.

        But so are we. Reports last week show that our country has resumed its role as arms supplier to the world.

        Since Sept. 11, we've shipped $3.5 billion in weapons and military training to unstable regimes, many with abysmal human rights records.

        As we trade weapons for war allies, we're forgetting an old lesson about mercenary relationships: those weapons could easily be turned against us one day.

A little callous

        I'm similarly repulsed by another of the Bush administration's antiterrorism strategies, to systematically clip civil liberties for the good of “homeland security.”

        Our government has recently endorsed spying on each other, secret arrests and imprisonments, deportations, often without legal representation, and a raft of new restrictions on public access to information.

        Thank God, some courts in recent weeks have repelled those efforts.

        But with all these battles going on, how can any of us just get back to business as usual? I almost resent the necessity to do so.

        Most companies, government agencies and other employers have scheduled regular workdays for Sept. 11, full of meetings, conferences and tasks big and small. I see it as a little callous.

        Me? I'll drag myself to work.

        But I'll be fighting an urge to spend the day in some quiet church, meditating, or at home on a couch with my arms around my children.

        I'll keep my grief to myself, at least until the evening, when I'm alone.

        E-mail damos@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/amos.

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