Remembering 9/11

I'm really afraid of expressing my opinions about patriotism-related things because, in addition to me being extremely distrusting of the government, I'm not really from here, so I really don't know how to react when people get all gung-ho about America. And then there's 9/11. Should we remember it? Sure. We remember the Holocaust and pre-Civil War slavery all the time (i.e. 3/4 of all of my summer reading books ever). People died during 9/11, so I completely recognize that this is a deeply personal event for a lot of Americans.
But.
I have a little bit of suspicion that there was some kind of government involvement in the event. I mean, after that day, there was a face to the name of terrorism: Al Qaeda, and more specifically, Saddam Hussein. I don't mean to be all conspiracist-y and stuff, but there was some evidence that showed that some parts of the story didn't add up, like the hole in the Pentagon being too small for the plane they said crashed into, and the plane completely missing.
In a completely and unequivocally unbiased and probably extremely un-American way of thinking, wasn't the US bombing the Middle East too? I mean, they're pretty much terrorizing those people too. At the very least, it gave Al Qaeda another motive for committing that act.
So yes, we have to remember 9/11, I mean we're forced to, anyway, so we might as well think about why we remember it. To commemorate the people who died? Well yes, but people died from Hurricane Katrina, and we don't have a huge TV specials to remember that (there are some, but it's not as prevalent as 9/11). So what is it? Personally, I think it's to keep the fear of terrorism alive. Why? To make the government look good? To prepare us for some sort of bigger plan in the future? I don't know. I've definitely noticed people's diminishing emotional investment in remembering 9/11 over the years, but at the same time, there's an omnipresent atmosphere of "you better feel super patriotic on 9/11 or else you suck as an American," so no one dares says anything against it (this is why I usually stay quiet). What I can say is, 9/11 is definitely one of the main defining factors of American identity.