By today, the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, there will have already been countless tributes and memorials. It’s good to remember. Sept. 11, 2001, changed our nation permanently. It’s now part of our experience, both as individuals and as a people, and will continue to affect us profoundly for decades to come.

But as we remember, we also must consider the roads not taken. For our response to the horrific loss of life that day has been in some ways misguided, and in at least one case has done us grievous harm.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, offered one of the most revealing reassessments. Keller was among many life-long liberals who, nonetheless, wholeheartedly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — the most fateful consequence of 9/11.

Keller writes that his initial editorial response, on Sept. 12, was cautious, but he soon began changing his mind. He attributes this, in part, to the birth of his second daughter, nine months after the attack. “Something dreadful was loose in the world,” he said, producing “the urge to stop it, to do something – to prove something.”

Keller, who began this period on the editorial page and later was named newsroom chief, had not previously commented on the Times coverage and editorials. He now says, unequivocally, that “Operation Iraqi Freedom was a monumental blunder.” And so it was.

I wasn’t among those who ever thought invading Iraq was a good idea, and Keller’s reassessment in fact does not go far enough. As we can now see, even the invasion of Afghanistan immediately following the attacks was also bungled. Virtually everyone supported that retaliation, but Afghanistan was not the biggest problem. Far more intractable has been our putative ally, Pakistan, which ended up harboring Osama bin Laden for at least five years. Since bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. commandos, there’s been virtual silence about the complicity of Pakistan’s government, which seems barely able to control its military.

Pakistan, unlike Iran or Iraq, is a nuclear-armed state, and it’s clear that nuclear powers have a level of immunity to questioning no other nation would receive.

In short, the world is a far more complicated place than our post-Sept. 11 responses acknowledged. We have lost precious time, and enormous good will, chasing the wrong targets and fighting the wrong wars.

The cost has been huge, and mounting. Not only have we spent nearly $2 trillion on mishandled wars – twice that, by some analyses – but there are thousands of lost and ruined lives to reckon with. At home, our politics is far more partisan, and often pointless, and we are not summoning the will to respond to an economic crisis that poses a second threat to our national well-being.

Our flawed response to Sept. 11 involves small matters as well as large. A few months after the attacks, Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” attempted to detonate an explosive in flight, and, for the past 10 years. Americans have been taking off their shoes at airports. It’s now the second leading cause of traveler complaints, after canceled flights.

No one else in the world does this – not even Israel, which has far more to fear from terrorists. An MIT security expert aptly calls the shoe policy “a make-everybody-feel-good thing.” We’re now told federal authorities hope to end shoe searches, not because they’ve re-evaluated the threat, but because scanners may eventually do the job.

In Maine, with little notice, the Department of Homeland Security has spent $200 million constructing new border-crossing stations, including such unlikely points as Forest City, Easton and Bridgewater. The new Forest City station was downsized from $8 million to $5.4 million after local officials decided it was a bit much for a gateway to Canada that handles six to seven cars a day.

A few years after most of Europe eliminated passport controls, we created them for Canada, our neighbor and close ally, with whom we have been at peace for 200 years.

I have an odd feeling when I shed my keys, coins, wallet and cell phone to enter the federal building in Augusta – where the main public interest is getting tax questions answered. Since Timothy McVeigh’s crimes in Oklahoma City in 1995, no one has attacked a federal building, but the security exercises may never end.

We’re cutting education budgets while pursuing the unattainable goal of complete safety, not considering what risks can be reduced at a reasonable cost.

As a nation, we are poorer than we were 10 years ago, and few feel any safer.