Can you remember a time when the Middle East wasn’t ubiquitous in the international section of every newspaper and news broadcast? When it didn’t always feel so important?

For all those historians who love plotting history books with dates, 9/11 fits in just fine. The geopolitics of the desert became a household concern instantaneously; action thrillers had a new generic enemy, and the plots of a thousand documentaries and news features were written.

But it meant more than that. It was the entire reawakening of the yellow ribbon movement, the beginning of endless speeches directed toward our fighting sons and daughters overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. After a decade spotted with genocides we never really cared about, the freedom fighters flew back with a vengeance. And now they are in no mood to leave anytime soon.

But now what? The Saddams we once thought safe are being overthrown, our puppet governments ignore their paymasters and — in a throwback to the Cold War — our own ambassadors are being attacked. We capriciously throw billions of dollars at Pakistan , sell $60 billion in guns to Saudi Arabia , and funnel approximately $3 billion a year to the eternal defense of Israel . All numbers, but for what?

Every year, some new image frightens us, nuclear bombs from nations that could never bomb us, revolutions in the midst of revolutions. Talk of war plagues presidential debates. The body bag toll from Iraq totaled almost 4,500 before we ever so slightly scurried out and the death toll in Afghanistan just passed 2,000 . More numbers again, but for what?

Twenty-five years ago, we could dubiously defend our realpolitik freedom fighting on a flimsy domino premise, We made it on the premise that we absolutely had to do everything we could to prevent ”them” from coming here, to prevent the towers of bombs we spent even more numbers building from ever being used. It was a danger as real as any Red Dawn.

But Jack Bauer doesn’t feel as real for some reason. The plastic terror scares that plague holiday news coverage never really explode, and how much longer can we really be expected to live life constantly on our toes? As we watch the Middle East fall into the background noise of international concern, we allow it to never end. We allow those numbers to keep doing nothing but grow. We’re already too stratified to fall apart in any meaningful way, so if we continue meandering as we always do, continue fearing Iranian nukes and Syrian massacres, then it will never end and never just fade away.

We must get out now. Urgently, completely and without a single look back. Issue our condemnations safely from the lawn of the White House and the seats of the United Nations General Assembly and make tragic film dramatizations of it only sparingly. Let the troubles implode, explode and decompose of the crazy violence we’re used to seeing in camera lenses in lands so distant and far away.

A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Oct. 10 print edition. Andrew Karpan is a contributing writer. Email him at [email protected]