Note that I am not talking here about individuals who have lost loved ones. Grief like that is personal, and should be done on someone's own time. But as a nation? It's time for 9/11 to be a historical note, rather than a current event. A thing remembered, rather than a thing mourned.

It's been a decade, a decade spent mostly at war. The perpetrators died during the event. Their leaders have been mostly hunted down, and the figurehead of their organization is dead. Al-Qaida soldiers on, it is true, but made up now largely of people who joined since 9/11, many of them seeking revenge on the US for things that happened in this past decade of our own crusade.

And yet, on Sunday, every channel I could find was talking about the towers, reliving the trauma of that day. I get it... trauma makes good television, stirs strong feelings, can motivate people. But while we restoked our national anger, I wondered where it all leads.

Perhaps to more "staying the course" rhetoric, but staying which course? If revenge is your thing, 9/11 has been avenged with interest a hundred times over, with new blood spilled that leads to calls of revenge against us. And if not revenge, then what?

Perhaps to more mistrust of Islam, a faith often called upon to denounce its violent zealots, yet the microphones only seem to be on when the zealots are talking. Literally millions of religious leaders have called for peace, love, and reconciliation in the decade since 9/11. Yet the only ones who make the news are those who call for blood and intolerance.

As with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, our nation's sense of pride and security was hurt when the Twin Towers fell. The hurt was visceral, and has gone on to drive much of our foreign policy in the decade since. Sometimes for the better, often not.

I'm not sure how long it took for America to put Pearl Harbor into the history books, maybe asking to do so after a decade is unrealistic. But the time comes eventually when poking that old wound does only harm, and I feel we are approaching that point, assuming that we have not already reached it.

Eventually, our mourning must end. In the immediate aftermath of moments of great tragedy, mourning is an absolute necessity... but eventually, the time comes to move on. And I feel that time has come.