For what it's worth

I had wanted to make a statement regarding today's observance of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Something substantial, maybe even eloquent. Something to cut through the ebbing jumble of sentiment and what has passed for public introspection.

Those words haven't yet come to me. But I can't get rid of the impulse to write. Or the irritating kernel of an idea.

As much as we want to memorialize 9/11/01, we can't lose sight of 4/19/95.

It's not so much the eerie parallels--each the biggest attack to that point, each subsequent investigation characterized by nagging loose ends affording the conspiracy-minded ample material. They're too different in scale and scope to be lumped together.

Rather, it's the suspicion that, as much as we are supposed to have adjusted our lives to the new realities ushered in by 9/11, I think we have yet to really absorb the lessons of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Chief among them is that, if we are to win a war against something as abstract as "terror," we can't assume it is the sole property or activity of some evil Other, lurking out there (or in here) somewhere. We had better be prepared to face terror and terrorism, not simply in our midst, but among our kind, in ourselves.