It was a gray Tuesday today in central New Jersey,with intermittent rains falling steadily as fresh tears. There was little overt acknowledgment of the 9/11 anniversary, just over an hour away from Manhattan. No need -- the shadows of memory are palpable. That day in 2001, sitting in a computer lab that my students and I used to launch our local coverage, I wrote:

"On the morning of September 11, 2001, individual Americans and people around the world siezed upon the Internet, as well as television, radio and telephones as a way of making sense of madness. What we saw and heard seemed scripted by some B-grade Hollywood hack: first the news that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, then live images of a second plane, and the towers imploding, and then the word about the Pentagon and the rumors of elsewhere, and there were no words to be said, and no sense to be made, but we kept searching...."

Six years later, we are still searching: for a way out of the morass in Iraq, for clues to the enigma of Osama bin Laden and his confederates, for clues about how we to make our differences a source of strength, instead of fear.

Cheryl Rofer at Whirled Views has been searching too. She's wondering why we ever invaded Iraq. She's also been paying close attention to what the presidential candidates are saying about foreign policy. Check out her close reading of a series of essays by some of the leading candidates in a series of essays for Foreign Affairs magazine. She summarizes essays by Edwards, Giuliani, Obama, Richadson and Romney, capped by some general observations such as this:

"All of the essays contained a certain amount of posturing and fluffy feel-good, along with bones thrown to special interests. That is what I was trying to strip away to get to the policy prescriptions. The nature of the posturing, of course, is important, and, by and large, consistent with the ways the candidates present themselves. Thus Obama is for change, Edwards is populist, Richardson is wonky, and Giuliani keeps reminding us of 9/11. Romney is harder to characterize, sort of Giuliani lite....

I mentioned earlier that the candidates tend to present a practice or policy that they deem undesirable, but do not necessarily say how they would improve on it. Richardson and Edwards were the most specific in building on past mistakes; Obama somewhere in the middle, and Romney and Giuliani the vaguest."

The whole series is definitely worth reading.

At South by Southwest Carol Gee worries that the War on Terror has not only cost us "terrible loss of life and national treasure" but also "a serious erosion of civil liberties of US citizens."

"September 11, 2001 was a terrible day for the people of the United States. The loss of life, the turn of events in the Middle East, the huge debts incurred, and any resulting fearfulness of our people are all confounding consequences to be confronted. Among the most confounding consequences, in my opinion, was the damage done to the U.S. Constitution. The current administration's terribly misguided effort to "make us more safe" did nothing of the sort. Our leaders must understand that we cannot let the most cherished values of our nation come under successful attack from extremists, because we became too fearful. We cannot let the terrorists succeed with that, any more than with any other aspect of the conflict."

Rep. Jane Harman, D-CA worries that the law that Congress passed last month giving the executive branch expanded powers to conduct warrantless surveillance is "overbroad." Harman, who chairs the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Risk Assessment, wants to see a narrower version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed that would restore the original law's "carefully crafted, bipartisan law to check and balance unfettered executive authority."

For CP at An Oxymoron is not an Idiot With Zits, America has changed in ways that are palpable and personal. An American woman married to an Israeli man with an Arab-sounding name, she is frustrated and ambivalent over the recurring episodes of racial profiling he endures when he has to travel on business. While her husband takes the searches he endures in stride,

"I have mixed feelings about this issue. On one hand, I can understand that our country needs to profile certain people based on a pre-conceived notion that all middle easterners are a threat to this country. This is being very narrow, of course, because we are allies of Israel. If I were the one getting on the plane with some suspicious looking person, I would want them checked out too...I think. But, on the other hand, this is something that the hotband has to endure everytime he flies. He feels it is warranted, their suspicions of him, due to past transgressions of other middle easterners. Yet, I can't help but be protective of a man who releases spiders outdoors instead of killing them."

Finally, Ann Althouse has a question for the "young man amid the youth of Islam" that Osama bin Laden is trying to recruit for new terror attacks:

"Why not live instead? It's a rather wonderful alternative to death."

Or as Sade put it earlier this summer,

No matter, no matter what color,
You are still my brother
No matter no matter what color
You are still my brother
Everybody wants to live together,
Why can't we live together?