F r o n t   L i n e Mass Distraction by Brian Stempeck "Allegedly" has become a very dangerous word. Two weeks ago the U.S. Military rained down 80 tomahawk missiles over the Middle East and coated the rubble with a thin film of propaganda. The event and its political aftermath were more stunning than a semen-stained dress, but were quickly processed and forgotten in national headlines in favor of more digestible issues. The Wag the Dog comparisons were pretty hard to swallow, but the fact remains that red, white, and blue have come to mean judge, jury, and executioner. U.S. warships sent a clear message: guilty verdicts are now delivered by cruise missiles, innocence proven only by dodging the ensuing shrapnel. The United States claimed it was looking for justice, when in actuality it was hungry for revenge. The only thing scarier than this is that even revenge gets disinterested looks from citizens on barstools and in living rooms, the kind of citizens they quote on the front page of the New York Times. These citizens are eager enough to comment on the President's love-life, but the destruction of six Afghan locations and one in Sudan is not enough to spur men from their chairs. Terrorists aren't brought to trial or given any of that judicial runaround reserved for fine Americans like Timothy McVeigh. When our self-professed goal as a nation is to spread our bright, shining equality throughout the world, this is an interesting way to behave in world headlines. During the post-strike hours several sound-bytes resonated on NPR, slogans like "Our target was terror," and "Our mission was justice," probably written by the speechwriter the White House hired last year fresh from college, snatched from a stunning career as an Ivy League politico. The thought of a 23-year-old running our country -- running our airwaves at least -- is a frightening one. It is more frightening to reason that he might have had some say in where the missiles were going, might have even got to click a button or two, safely aboard a destroyer 500 miles from Sudan. As if selling satellite technology abroad and giving special coffee meetings at the White House weren't bad enough, the latest charges against the United States Military indicate that the largest of the political donors and the other Washington big boys often get to pick military targets as a special little return on their investment. The government of Sudan was outraged by the bombing of their soil, but what could they do? Climb the scaffolding of a wisely abandoned U.S. Embassy building? Within 12 hours of the incident the U.S. already had the support of our our humble allies (i.e. our most-favored nations), and C-Span was looking for some more dirt from the Oral Office. I'm proposing an experiment on behalf of the Sudanese people. I'll take credit for some disaster or another in Sudan, and the Sudanese government can say I was the alleged perpetrator. I'll sit in front of a factory that allegedly makes medicine, and since medicine and chemical warfare both involve chemicals, the building will be guilty too. The Sudanese government can knock Charlottesville into the sky with cruise missiles and celebrate the victory saying that terror -- me -- was eliminated, justice gained for my horrific crimes. I'm sure the U.S. won't mind a brief invasion of their airspace. Hopefully there'll be a Sudanese 23-year-old who wrote some catch phrases, and the Sudanese military will let him press the button. Maybe they'll sit in a posh little Sudanese room and watch the whole thing on a camera mounted on the front of the missile, even get to see me and my pesky terrorist friends screaming and running for impossible cover. He won't have to watch the aftermath though, or the cleanup. Just click and go. He'll save the video to show his kids, tell them Daddy targeted alleged terror, and obtained temporary justice, even though, being a wily international terrorist, I somehow got away. And if he has a reasonable sense of reality, followed by a slight breach in the security blanket wrapped around his country, he will wonder -- what happens when the man he missed with 80 tomahawks decides to strike back?

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