Artificial Closure.

I've always felt the most profound pity towards those victims who wait outside prison gates to celebrate the deaths of those murderers on Death Row, who finally were put down for their crimes.

In my years of media observations, I've seen many such victims express initial elation at hearing that the killer who took so much from their own lives is finally gone. Breathed his last.

I understand the emotion. Often times, these folks are promised some security, some sense of relief that the nightmare is finally over.

Except... it rarely is. What the victims and their families have been waiting for is elusive. Usually, the killers are out of circulation, safely locked up, for years before they are finally executed. And the promised "closure"?

If you look at the faltering marriages and relationships with surviving children, the drinking and drugging toll, it seems to me that those who begin working on "closure" long before the criminals are executed are those who keep their ongoing lives best in perspective. Prosecutors promise relief, but it's artificial. You don't just flip a switch, take one final life, and the pain is released.

I pity the 9-11 victims who think that this latest death will finally bring them some end too. Don't get me wrong -- they're entitled to their hatred, and their "eye for an eye" vengeance. I hope there are more sleepful nights, but I very much doubt if this is what they were holding out for, that their wishes will just now promise a new beginning.

A CBS newscaster today said: We put politics aside for 9-11. (Meaning Democrats and Republican politicians come together over this cause, even now, 10 years down a long road later.) I don't think it's that so much, as it is: 9-11 can accommodate all manners of political purposes and performances.

POTUS worked the room of police officers, signed a guest book (pool was unable to view what he wrote) and was given a gift by one woman who was not in a uniform but poolers couldn't tell what it was. He seemed flattered.

POTUS again gave brief remarks, echoing much of what he said at the firehouse. Check quotes against transcript.

"I am here basically to shake your hand and say how proud I am of all of you."

Sunday "sent a signal that we have never forgotten the extraordinary sacrifices that were made on 9/11."

"We did what we said we were going to do."

America will always come together over years and differences to ensure justice is done. (Not a direct quote.)

"What we did on Sunday is directly connected to what you do every day."

Thanked former Mayor Giuliani, says they have their political differences most days but that we're all Americans first.

Whole thing lasted around 15 minutes.

Said "Go Bulls!" to one officer as he took pictures with them. At 12:52 we're rolling to Ground Zero for the wreath laying.

So today, we lay wreaths and seek "closure", however loosely you might define that. And again this September, with another national election just a year away, again we'll be asked to remember, reflect, and re-live the pain of those days a decade ago. It's too big an event to pass on, too major an occasion to add up all that it's cost the country well beyond those few thousand lives initially taken in the September offense.

If that was justice, it was winning ugly. Think of all the other doors kicked in before we finally got the right address for Osama, all the innocents wrongly shot dead and dropped by drone, in pursuing the ultimate mastermind who it turns out was hiding all along in Pakistan. The Iraqi lives, the Pakistanis -- some say they number in the tens of thousands, had we bothered to keep an accurate count. We value the Americans taken from us on 9-11 much more, naturally, but think of all the foreign innocents who died at home too, as we spent 10 years seeking this justice for outselves.

Celebrate if you like -- toot your horn and pop a cork, but don't be too surprised if Man's version of justice is ultimately not as fulfilling as promised. Again, those victims who seem to recognize this early on, and don't give the Bad Guys any more power over them than they've already taken, seem to be so much more advanced in their healing work -- imho -- than those who think that this final death will be the one to bring an end to all the pain.