Bombs away

And so the day we all knew was coming came. On a Sunday. Which meant that many red-blooded Americans were faced with the painful dilemma of whether to watch the Vikings get manhandled by the visiting Saints or Uncle Sam take it to the Taliban on their home field. Thank gawd for the remote control. Bombing. Screen pass. Bombing. Lateral. Bombing. Quarterback sack.

America, what a country! Certainly you don’t want to pre-empt the broadcast of a sporting event for something as mundane as the U.S. of A.’s first wave of attacks in what promises to be a long, long war.

When it’s our citizens dying in a smoking jumble of concrete and steel, the attention is, of course, undivided. No question about it. But when it’s them being buried in rubble, and the Cardinals are driving toward an upset victory over the Eagles, well, you have to have your priorities in order.

And so maybe we missed it on CNN (which doesn’t have Sunday football) but it doesn’t seem like many of the talking heads providing analysis of the attack were asking questions such as those being raised by reporter Jason Vest in the article he wrote for us about Afghanistan.

Also absent from the mainstream — whoa, hold that thought for a second, the Niners are about to attempt a go-ahead field goal here — were some basic debates, such as: Does this attack on Afghanistan conform to international law?

According to John Quigley, professor of international law at Ohio State University, the answer to that question would be a definite “no.”

“Military action should have been done through the Security Council at the United Nations,” quoth Quigley. “As it is, any U.S. and U.K. military action is illegal under international law.”

But, to paraphrase Tina Turner, what’s legal got to do with it? This is America, and we got the big stick, and the crowd is in the stands screaming “Blitz, blitz, blitz!”

For those of you interested in opinions such as those offered by Quigley and other voices not making it through the mainstream din, you can visit the Institute for Public Accuracy at www.accuracy.org.

Or, better yet, you can obtain an antidote to knee-jerks in person at a teach-in being held 11 a.m.-5 p.m. this Saturday, Oct. 13, at U-M Dearborn, CASL Bldg., room 1030. Workshops will include talks on Islam, U.S. foreign policy, threats to civil liberties in this country and media coverage of the crisis.

For more information phone 313-832-7863 or e-mail [email protected]. As for the rest of you: Go Patriots!