There's a saying in the Middle East that a foreign journalist who comes there and stays a week goes home to write a book in which he presents a pat solution to all of the Middle East's problems. If he stays a month, he writes a magazine article filled with "if's" and "but's" and "on the other hand's." If he stays a year, he writes nothing at all, for the complexities and paradoxes of this explosive area have left him bewildered and confused.
—From a 1962 editorial in the Saturday Evening Post