( CNN ) One evening last month , a teenage suicide bomber blew himself up on the steps of the auditorium of the French cultural center in Kabul . The target was a crowd of Afghans and expatriates gathered to watch a play titled `` Heartbeat : Silence after the Explosion . '' The show was written as a condemnation of suicide bombings . `` Pieces of flesh were plastered on the wall . There were children and women crying for help , '' said one civil society activist who spoke with Reuters just after the suicide attack . A Taliban spokesman claimed the group was responsible for the attack , and said the play was targeted because it was being performed `` to insult Islamic values and spread propaganda about our jihad operations , especially on suicide attacks . '' Sadly , for too long it has been relatively easy for citizens of the United States and Europe to indulge in the `` otherization '' of this particular brand of extremist horror . Yes , such attacks are awful and deserved condemnation , but they were , until the tragic events of this week in Paris , other people 's hells . They generally occurred in far-flung places and were committed against faraway people : schoolgoers in Peshawar and theatergoers in Kabul . Nearly two years ago , for example , Anne Smedinghoff , a 25-year-old foreign service officer serving in Afghanistan , went to deliver books to an Afghan school , but was killed by a suicide bomber on the way . In the aftermath of her death , Secretary of State John Kerry said : `` The folks who want to kill people , and that 's all they want to do , are scared of knowledge . And they want to shut the doors and they do n't want people to make their choices about the future . For them , it 's 'You do things my way and if you do n't , we 'll throw acid in your face . We 'll put a bullet in your face , ' to a young girl trying to learn . So this is a huge challenge for us . It is a confrontation with modernity , with possibilities . '' But while the media covered the tragedy , Smedinghoff 's death remained a story that happened `` over there . '' Indeed , for the past several years -- at least since attacks on Madrid and London -- Westerners have been able to go about their day-to-day business , with little thought to what was taking place thousands of miles away , for this was someone else 's horror . This has been despite the alarming rate at which the death toll has been growing , with Afghans being forced to get accustomed to having their lives punctured by senseless attacks , including the heartbreaking slayings of an Afghan journalist , his wife and two daughters gathered around a dinner table for a holiday celebration as a family . As the United Nations in Afghanistan noted recently , more civilian deaths and injuries occurred during 2014 than in any year since it began such reports in 2009 . Of particularly gruesome note was a November suicide attack targeting a crowd huddled to watch a volleyball game that killed more than 50 people , including 21 children . Israel 's Institute for National Security Studies released a report counting 592 suicide attacks in 2014 , which it said was a 94 % increase over the previous year , resulting in the deaths of approximately 4,400 people . The United Nations put the number of civilians killed in Iraq last year at a staggering 12,282 , more than double the number killed in 2013 . True , as these numbers have soared , Americans have found themselves increasingly concerned . An August Pew Research poll , for example , found 65 % agreeing `` the world is more dangerous than it was several years ago , '' while just 7 % said the world has gotten safer . Yet at the same time , more than half said the United States `` does not have a responsibility to do something about the violence in Iraq . '' Yet the reality is that extremists wreaking bloody havoc in Iraq or Yemen or Afghanistan or Pakistan will not be kept at bay forever . Nor , as an Afghan activist who ran schools for girls during the Taliban era once told me , will an Afghanistan left to itself remain its own problem indefinitely . America , understandably , wants to bring to a close 13 years of conflict . And it may want to believe that the tide of war is really receding . But as the events still unfolding in Paris this week have demonstrated -- and as was underscored by 2013 's Boston bombing -- extremists are ready to bring their violence to our own shores . Europe and America are not immune to the threat . If `` Je suis Charlie , '' a slogan adopted in solidarity with the magazine Charlie Hebdo that was attacked in France , is to mean anything , it should be about the choice to stand up in defense of those who believe in a free press , safe schools for boys and girls , and theaters free from suicide attack . And that means standing up for people wherever they are in the world .
She says : Europe has too often ignored threats overseas . Europe and America are not immune to threat , she says .