Afghanistanism is a term , first recorded in the United States , for the practice of concentrating on problems in distant parts of the world while ignoring controversial local issues . In other contexts , the term has referred to " hopelessly arcane and irrelevant scholarship , " " fascination with exotic , faraway lands , " or " Railing and shaking your fist at an unseen foe who is quite unaware of your existence , much less your fury . " The Oxford English Dictionary lists Afghanistanism as a U.S. colloquialism ; the first written citation it provides is from 1948 : J. Lloyd Jones in Probl . Journalism ( American Society of Newspaper Editors Convention ) 73 , " I do n't wish to belabor this subject of Afghanistanism , this business of taking forthright stands on elections in Costa Rica , while the uncollected local garbage reeks beneath the editor 's window . " Robert H. Stopher and James S. Jackson , writing in their column " Behind the Front Page , " said the " new term " was coined by Jenkin Lloyd Jones of Oklahoma 's '' Tulsa Tribune '' at that same convention , in Washington , D.C . They quoted Jones as saying : The tragic fact is that many an editorial writer ca n't hit a short-range target . He 's hell on distance . He can pontificate about the situation in Afghanistan with perfect safety . It takes more guts to dig up the dirt on the sheriff . But columnist Joe Klein wrote in '' Time '' magazine in 2010 that the term originated in the 19th century when " the British press defined '' Afghanistanism '' as the obsession with obscure foreign wars at the expense of domestic priorities , " adding that " Afghanistanism seems likely to become a national debate in the United States before long : Is building roads and police stations in Afghanistan more important than doing so at home ? " The concept earlier came to have several applications . On one hand it was applied in North American journalism to newspaper articles about faraway places that were irrelevant to local readers . Other writers said , though , that Afghanistanism was the tendency of some editors to avoid hard local news by writing opinion pieces about events happening in distant lands . As '' New York Times '' writer James Reston put it about journalists , " Like officials in Washington , we suffer from Afghanistanism . If it 's far away , it 's news , but if it 's close to home , it 's sociology . " Earlier , educator Robert M. Hutchins used the expression in a speech at the California Institute of Technology in 1955 : Afghanistanism , as you know , is the practice of referring always to some remote country , place , person or problem when there is something that ought to be taken care of near at home that is very acute . So you say to a professor at Caltech , " What about smog ? " and he says , " Have you heard about the crisis in Afghanistan ? " In 1973 , the concept was adapted to reporting on environmentalism , which was said by journalism researchers Steven E. Hungerford and James B. Lemert to deal with environmental problems of distant communities rather than local ones . This observation was echoed in 2004 by B.A. Taleb , who called it " displacing the environmental problems and issues to other places and ignoring their existence in one 's own community or country . " After the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11 , 2001 , the concept resurfaced , with some writers asserting that it was no longer applicable to contemporary events . For example , Stuart H. Loory , chair in Free-Press Studies at the University of Missouri School of Journalism , wrote on December 1 , 2001 : A primary mission of the news business is to work as a distant early warning signal of impending problems for the public and those who can deal with those problems . It must work in a convincing way , and that means news organizations must train and educate journalists to work in various parts of the world knowledgably . They can not fit the image now in vogue — that of parachutists jumping into an area to cover disaster on short notice . That perpetuates “ Afghanistanism , ” a concept that has long since outlived its usefulness , if it ever had any at all .
attacks on the World Trade Center
September 11 attacks
Afghanistanism