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Robert Kirby column originally published Sept. 13, 2001

I must be getting old. When I first learned the extent of Tuesday's devastation at the World Trade Center, I immediately thought of my new granddaughter. Although 2,000 miles away from the horror, my first thought was to wonder if Hallie was safe.

Then I wondered about the grandchildren of others in New York City. How could anyone do something so deliberately evil to something so innocent?

This is a big switch for me. Years ago, my reaction would have been to call for an equal slaughter of the guilty, to gloat over the views from missile cameras closing on unsuspecting targets a world away.

When Afghanistan's Taliban had the temerity to say that Osama bin Laden was not behind yesterday's attack, I was livid. We're vulnerable, not stupid. But, hey, what can you possibly expect from that part of the world, a place so chaotic and unreasonable that diplomacy is a fool's errand. Why shouldn't we bomb them? Wouldn't it at least improve the world's gene pool?

It's easy to feel this way. When someone hurts you, the first thing you want is to hurt him back. Forget the long view, the only thing that will satisfy us is vengeance now.

Maybe that is why people I know to be normally reasonable and circumspect are calling for mass retaliation. To them, there is nothing wrong with the Middle East that nuclear weapons couldn't fix quite nicely.

Friends and even members of my family were outraged by news footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets, exulting over our pain and suffering: "Let's just kill 'em all."

In situations like this, the real damage isn't what evil people do to us, but what we do to ourselves in the aftermath.

At least one of the twisted goals sought by such madmen is to initiate the rest of the world into the fellowship of hate, to make us over in their image.

It is right to be angry, and to want justice, and even to seek the destruction of those who attack the innocent. But in doing so, we must guard against a descent into the jungle of racism and rage.

We have been there before. After our first Pearl Harbor, we turned on ourselves in the extremity of our fear and shock. We rounded up Japanese-American citizens and put them in concentration camps.

The Middle East isn't the only birthing ground of hatred. America has its own homegrown brand of mindless terrorism. The bombing in Oklahoma City and the murders at abortion clinics are not the work of Muslim extremists.

So in the days and weeks to come, we should not presume that anyone who prays to Allah, or has an olive cast to his skin, is our enemy. The war against terrorism is not a struggle between races, but a fight between good and evil.

We would do well to remember that evil wears a variety of faces.

As we pick up the pieces left from the worst of our days, the goal we must share is that we never see the face of Osama bin Laden when we look into the mirror.

America has not been brought to her knees by Tuesday's insanity. If anything, we will become more united in our attitude toward those who arbitrate their demands through terror.

Some countries and certain people will soon understand what Admiral Yamamoto realized after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that a sleeping giant has been awakened.

But I hope we're careful. Somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq, there are other new grandfathers. Just like me, all they want is for the world to make sense for their innocents.