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[Big_Bird]

Be afraid, America. Be very afraid

By Bradley Burston

We have met the enemy, and, all too often, he looks like us.

The United States has spent breathtaking sums since September 11 to assure that people who look like Mohammed Atta don't walk onto airplanes, take thousands of innocent lives, and destroy embodiments of the nation's majesty.

But what if the terrorist you're looking for is not an Arab, not a Muslim, not swarthy and foreign-born and, yes, alien?

What if he looks and acts the way Americans used to believe that real Americans were supposed to look: cool, quiet, Christian and, yes, white?

What if he's the guy from the Norman Rockwell calendar, the knowing veteran at the hardware store, the serious, courteous, diffident rock on which the All-American empire was built?

After the vast resources sinkholed into Homeland Security, what if the most immediate, the most likely, the most realistic terrorist threat to America, is the white male who votes Bush, goes to church, mows and edges his lawn, and one clear morning gathers his firearms and ammunition and walks into a school.

We don't want to think about him. We prefer our terrorists wild-eyed and fanatic, turbaned and howling, bearded and masked and glaring and gowned.

We don't want to think about profiling Charles Whitman. We don't want to think that the gifted student, the accomplished pianist, the Eagle Scout who grows to become the Marine who wins the Good Conduct medal, married to his hardworking, supportive sweetheart, will one day climb a clock tower, shoot 14 passersby to death, and wound dozens more.

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