Last week, shortly after writing my column and sending it off through the Internet ether, I was checking football updates and news on the Yahoo! homepage. The top story: U.S. Airstrikes Hit Afghanistan. And suddenly it all started to make sense.

Earlier in the day (just as the airstrikes began, but before reports hit the media), I'd been watching the first part of CNN's Late Edition. Pakistan's Prime Minister was staunchly unresponsive to Wolf Blitzer's questions about whether he knew if the U.S. would begin an offensive against the Taliban and terrorist positions in Afghanistan. For the most part, the PM deferred answers to U.S. officials. He knew, of course, that everything was happening already. And I'm sure, if I'd been more patient, I could have watched this uninformative interview for fifteen more minutes, and the reality would have begun to hit the news media.

The newfangled war had begun.

Something that made me pause a bit was the reaction of the country in general.

When September 11th happened, our country shut down. No one could really work, even though we all went in and punched our time clocks and sat on our hands. Oh sure, if you are in the service industries, I'm sure there was dry cleaning and food preparation and wait service to do. But for me, for all of us around the country in offices in front of computers, there was nothing. Everything pretty much stopped. There were no deliveries coming from FedEx, there were no business trips, and it was odd to go into Wendy's and get some cheap food. It was odd because of the difference between what I felt (supreme ineffectiveness and disassociation) and what the counter people at Wendy's were saying to me ("Would you like to Biggie Size that?").

But we go to war and everything runs like tick tocks on a clock.

I thought last Monday would see a repeat of workers huddled around the TV. Nope. I thought there might be another speech from one of my many bosses about how the company understands the strange times we are experiencing. Nope. For the most part, there was no mention of the bombs dropping.

It was like war is business as usual.

I'm not asking for days of grief or jubilation or more flag waving (like that has even come close to stopping since mid-September), but shouldn't we reflect about the fact that we're killing people half the world away?

No. We're worried that someone might send us anthrax in the mail. We're worried about small pox. We're worried about anyone of Middle-Eastern descent who comes up and talks to us (He might try to take down the plane! Oh wait, we're just walking along the sidewalk...).

But killing people in the name of wiping out terrorism is fine. It is expected. It is normal.

This is the new war. This is our divine right. This is our Jihad. We're not fighting for God (although we do feel he is fighting with us), we're fighting for the right to go to the movies without thinking that someone might throw mustard gas into the ventilation system. We're fighting for the right to get to the airport three hours early, get strip searched and wait on the runway for an extra hour because all of the flights are backed up‹and the right to pay overpriced fares for this privilege.

This is when I have to wonder about what people are living for. Is it noble to work ourselves to the bone for fifty years, retire and then walk around the mall at seven in the morning complaining about all the new aches and pains that have sprung up overnight? Are we all continually repeating ourselves until we die? And if we are, why don't we want this to be interrupted, to be thrown into a bit of chaos, maybe cut short our get up go to work go home watch TV go to sleep and start over again?

Shouldn't we live to look into the eyes of another, to hold those we hold most dear, to love and lose and try again?

Shouldn't we live to live, and not to continue the downward steps into death?

And shouldn't we take a second and reflect about the paradox of killing others so that we might live however we want to live?

Our country is on high alert for the unexpected. Is this because there is a real threat or because it gives us a sense of purpose while our government changes and erases the lives of people who none of us would ever meet‹or actually be threatened by.

This new kind of war our government keeps talking about seems a lot like what we've been doing for years. But after working in advertising for almost two years, I've learned a few things. Calling something "new" is the best way to get people to try it out.

Matt Worley has been sick this week, but he's pretty sure it's not anthrax.