You do bring up some interesting points, but I think that Stone's film is not so much about the "poor american lives lost" as it is about the people, namely rescue workers, firemen, and civilians who did what they could to save the few lives they could. Granted its impossible for it to not have echoes of a much larger scale, and its impossible to not be emotional dealing with that issue.

I think Spike Lee's 25th Hour was probably the best film about the subject, because it dealt with it more as an after thought. There was an echo of the destruction, without trying to make an overt statement about it. Even if the subject is too great to make direct statements about, I don't necessarily think it should be ignored either.