Everything that happened afterwards doesn't change what the trauma was like for the people who where in NYC when it happened. My emotions aren't as such that I can just dismiss how it must have felt to have actually seen the two planes hit the towers.

It's also not true that it had full support - it was like McCarthyism, you couldn't voice an opposing point lest you get branded a traitor and terrorist sympathiser, lose your job, and potentially make yourself or your family the target of the people going full Patriot Act.

It rubs me the wrong way when people bring up the ensuing war on terror whenever someone expresses sadness about 9/11, as if by mourning 3000 civilians in NYC takes away from a finite resource of emotions. I always feel like the implicit message that somshow 3000 dead Americans (and also citizens from like 100 other countries btw) are worth less than 3000 Iraqi lives out of the millions dead.