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Stu Bykofsky: Sadly, we don't seem to be circling the date

HERE IT comes again, the dust-gray anniversary. Sculpted of angst and anguish, cloaked in sorrow, 9/11 melds past humiliation and future threat. Like the anniversary of the death of a loved one, we observe it but do not embrace it.

HERE IT comes again, the dust-gray anniversary.

Sculpted of angst and anguish, cloaked in sorrow, 9/11 melds past humiliation and future threat. Like the anniversary of the death of a loved one, we observe it but do not embrace it.

Post 9/11, our armed forces have paid more than 6,000 lives in Afghanistan and Iraq combined, the theaters in this tragedy. Our inattention to the bravery of Americans who volunteered, knowing the deep peril, is disgraceful. We look up only on days of particularly heavy casualties. Then we add them to the 3,000 civilians murdered on 9/11. Do you remember your emotions and resolve on that deadly day?

What part of your life has 9/11 claimed?

If you were 50 when hijacked silver birds pierced the World Trade Center tombstones, you have lived with it for 16 percent of your life. If you were 30, it has clouded one-quarter of your life. If you were 10, you've lived half your life with it.

The attack on New York, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania is what started the war, remember? Today, most of us barely notice. The war is like a screen saver. Just wallpaper.

How might we mark 9/11's 50th anniversary? With the sober elation of victory, or the shame of defeat?

Ten years ago, our tear-stained faces turned upward toward vanished towers, we said, "Everything has changed."

In his award-winning column addressed to the terrorists, the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts wrote, "When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice."

Would he write those words today? Would they be true?

World War I was called the war to end all wars. It didn't. The current war, we're not even allowed to call a war on terror. Something about America has changed.

Someone once wrote that the far left wants us not to meddle overseas because America is evil, while the far right wants us to disengage because the world is evil.

America is not evil. Some of the world is.

Our map to leave Iraq is drawn. What faction will control the country, by bullet or ballot, after we leave is unclear.

Not so Afghanistan, the war we had to fight. The fragile, corrupt, elected government will likely fall to the Taliban, which once ruled, protected al Qaeda and instigated our invasion. If the fundamentalists return - a disaster for the educated, women, gays, humanity - we have squandered our fortune and left lives and body parts on the battlefield for nothing. (There's actually a third war against jihadists, fought surreptitiously by our covert agents around the world.)

There are no good options. The wars are bleeding us, literally and financially. But if we leave before the job is done, as we have in the past, our enemies will see America as hollow, infidels in decline. For jihadists, weakness paints a tempting target.

We seem no more capable of reviving our economy than winning the war. Our leaders do not inspire. Where is our George Washington? Our F.D.R.? Our Reagan?

Obama is reducing our forces slowly, but slower than he imagined because he sees the frightening consequences of defeat. Unlike Vietnam, the murderous jihadists will attack us at home. They already have. We will have to pay, now or later, one way or another.

Obama and most politicians shun the word "victory." Some even ask, "What is meant by 'victory'?" To me, victory means an outcome in our favor. Not necessarily total, not exclusively militarily.

Despite the post-9/11 promises made through clenched teeth, such as by Pitts, Americans now seem tired and exasperated.

If Americans no longer believe "victory" is possible, then everything has changed.