He suggests, as only best friends can, that you resist the temptation to hit back, hard, at someone, anyone, anywhere. Or build bigger walls, higher fences, hire more guards.

It is important for your long-term security, and, by extension, ours, that your "response be right," he said.

So far, it has been, unlike Bill Clinton's flawed response to the 1998 terrorist attacks on American embassies in East Africa. American credibility took a heavy hit when the cruise missiles he dispatched killed innocents at a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan but missed Osama bin Laden and his operations in Afghanistan.

Despite all the media-baiting, your current administration has been steadfast in counselling patience until it determines who the dead culprits were and who is behind them.

As much as some hawks would have it, Tuesday's terrorist attacks were not the start of the Clash of Civilizations. "It's not one civilization or one people attacking another, but a bunch of extremists killing innocent civilians," Axworthy noted.

The United States needs to dig out "the root causes and the sources of this extreme anti-American antagonism," he said - a point also made separately by Sandy Berger, former National Security Adviser.

To do so, America must engage with, not isolate itself from, the world, as it has done lately, abrogating international treaties and walking away from its obligations.

This week's wickedly audacious attacks, annihilating thousands, represent the dark underbelly of globalization. Its tools - high technology, high-speed information and easy travel - shrink geography but also empower a handful to hit nation-states by targeting their most vulnerable spots: easily accessible public spaces and the civilians therein.

Short of creating a garrison state that would shut down our open democratic societies, Axworthy said, the only sensible response is international co-operation, not isolationism.

President George Bush and the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright opined that America was targeted because it is the brightest beacon of freedom and the best hope for humanity. Perhaps. Or, maybe because it no longer pays enough attention to those ideals and is indifferent to the suffering of too many peoples, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to the Middle East, if not contributing directly or indirectly to their troubles, thus driving the ordinary folk there to seethe in silence against America and the crazed ones into fanatical acts.

"If you let problems fester and hope they go away ... and withdraw yourself, you pay a price for it," Axworthy said. That's why "as neighbours, we have to reach out in a political way to say, `we're in this with you. It's not the United States against the world. Let's work together. We'll bring other countries, we will work with countries in the Middle East ... We can help in identification and intelligence as to the causes; work on technical security matters; and help organize some major international initiative to look at the broad issue.'"

On the domestic front, Americans are being told not to rush to judgment about who may be responsible.

"We pray that Arabs are not behind it," said an Arab American, echoing a broad sentiment in that beleaguered community. Said another: "I hope that the culprits were not Muslims."

Those are the voices of fear: minorities dreading a public backlash. Not all Arabs are Muslims. Not all the nearly 7 million American Muslims are Arabs. But in the public mind, they are. Both groups experienced harassment and hate during the Gulf War; in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing, before it was linked to Timothy McVeigh; and are beginning to in the last 48 hours.

Given this week's far greater civilian slaughter, they fear even worse, recalling the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the more recent movie Siege showing a large number of innocent Arab Americans being rounded up following an Arab terrorist attack.

It is instructive that such anxiety exists among law-abiding citizens in this age of heightened awareness of individual civil liberties and fading memories of mob rule.

It may indeed turn out that the terrorists were all Arabs, or Muslims, or both. So what? They were no more representatives of all Arabs or Muslims than Baruch Goldstein was of all Jews or Irish Republican Army members were of all Catholics.

It is revealed that some of the suspects were not foreigners but U.S. residents. That, too, means nothing by way of collective guilt; McVeigh did not make all Christian Americans suspects.

So, dear Americans: Hit the terrorists hard. Be merciless in going after them. But spare the innocents, both abroad and at home. Which is what, to your great credit, you and your President have done so far.