Six years ago, terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, killing almost 3,000 New Yorkers in the process, and ripping a hole in our skyline that has yet to be healed. That day, the global normalcy that London, Jerusalem, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo and Berlin are familiar with visited these shores, and is now here to stay.

The question before us today is this: what's the meaning of this event, and how do we best memorialize and commemorate it? Is it like this?

What is appropriate? Is it appropriate for Rudy Giuliani to pimp the dead of 9/11 in a bid for the White House? Is it, for that matter, appropriate for the young republicans to scream terrorism when they're accosted at a bar, more or less (no, it's not)?

What is appropriate, frankly, is to point out one stark fact: the man who ordered, by his own admission, the attack on New York is still free. Osama bin Laden remains beyond the reach of American justice.

It's also appropriate, indeed, a duty, to point out that the dead of 9/11 were used and abused by an administration looking for a convenient excuse to invade Iraq. In some quarters and in some very expensive offices, the bloody shirt of 9/11 has been waved whenever it seemed convenient. Want a war? 9/11. Want tax cuts? 9/11. Want hard-right justices? 9/11, again. And the list goes on.

Here, meanwhile, in this City, the early predictions of our demise as a metropolis of note have proven somewhat exaggerated, and life has, for those not directly affected, resumed. For the families of the victims, for the firefighters that sifted through the rubble, for the sickened rescue workers, in many cases, it has not.

So what's your 9/11 story? What lessons do you draw?