Is it callous of me to think that recognizing a day like 9-11 is counterproductive? I mean, 9-11 is the day of one of terrorism's greatest victories. Terrorists struck a huge blow to the entire world (though mostly the USA) by hijacking a handful of planes. It showed everyone how massively a small group of individuals could affect the lives of others for the worse. Recognizing a day of joint security failures is not my cup of tea. Learn from it, but forget about it other than that.
I realize that this post may be offensive to many people. I'm truly sorry for the loss of life and how it affected some people. It could have been avoided, but it wasn't. Like anyone who suffers the loss of a loved one in a preventable occurrence, the family of victims of this attack should seek to change the systems that allowed the tragedy to happen. Remembering the people individually and trying to prevent something like that from ever happening again is the best way to show your respects to those who have died as a result of the attacks.
Patriotism is lovely, but the loss of thousands of lives should not have any effect on whether you feel national pride or not. Be a patriot because you understand our government and feel that our country is great. The "patriotism" most people felt after these attacks and the subsequent counterattacks (regardless of whether you feel that those counterattacks were effective and/or necessary or not) was not true patriotism, but a desire to see justice done or some such thing. "Ideas are bulletproof," right? You can't kill terror. There will always be people who wish to sow the seeds of chaos or hatred, but you can't just kill a group of people because they believe that a certain person, group of people, organization, or something else should be destroyed. If they try to do something about it, that's when you can take action, and use lethal force if necessary.
...IMO.