An oil tanker is blown up off the coast of France. More than 180 people are killed in an explosion in Bali. The Bush administration explains that al Qaida's fingerprints are all over the incidents. Yet there is a palpable tentativeness to suggest a similar connection with a sniper in our own country, despite several eye-witness accounts describing the shooter as "a man with dark skin," or with an "olive complexion…Middle Eastern or Hispanic."

Perhaps government officials are trying to prevent panic. For months we've been warned about impending terrorist attacks in America, none of which have materialized. Maybe this is the start of something. Or maybe it's a continuation: we still don't know who mailed out anthrax-laden envelopes to members of the media and Congress last year.

The thought of dozens of al Qaida sleeper cells awakening all over the country with rifles and sniper scopes is chilling. But it should be no more chilling than one of our own gone off on a Unabomber-like trip into beserkdom.

My initial reaction when I heard of the blast in Oklahoma City on that April morning in 1995 was that it was the work of Middle-Eastern terrorists. I felt the same the following year when TWA flight 800 had mysteriously blown up over Long Island shortly after take-off.

Incredulity would best describe my feelings when investigators concluded it was only a spark in an empty fuel tank that destroyed the Paris-bound Boeing 747-100, killing all 229 people aboard.

But when I learned that it was two of our own -- Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols - who had conspired to detonate an ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel laden truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 Americans, I felt a deep sense of betrayal.

To the victims' families, none of this matters. Loved ones, whether killed in senseless tragedies or diabolical plots, are all dead. The loss is equally devastating to those left behind.

But the rest of us prefer to have an enemy we can wrap our hands around. Perhaps we are all a little xenophobic.

The American essayist, James Baldwin, writing in "The Price of the Ticket: Notes on the House of Bondage," stated: "When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget."

There are justifiable reasons for American's distrust of "dark and menacing strangers" in this post 9/11 world, a fact of life Mr. Baldwin could not know lay ahead in our future when he penned those words.

We are the beneficiaries of the greatest economy, the most democratic form of government, and the most religiously- and speech-tolerant society in the world. Millions of our forefathers bled and died on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Antietam to Normandy to guaranty these great American ideals for future generations.

Other nations -- our enemies -- are jealous of these freedoms. We are not about to give them up to anyone else, least of all to another foreign nation waging a jihad against us.

It's only natural for Americans to look for some foreign devil where none may lurk, and to feel betrayed when it's finally discovered that another American has been killing Americans in our own country.

Yet, Paul the apostle would remind us, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Since the day in the Garden when a woman took a bite of the forbidden fruit and then offered it to her husband, a long succession of sins has followed, the first among them being the murder of Abel by his own brother, Cain.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com. Visit our website at www.amyfound.org.