It could happen to us at any time. You board a plane, a guy sets off a bomb, and boom! _ it's all over.

That is the threat of terrorism. It can happen to anyone. And that is the real war that needs to be won. The one in Iraq is a different story _ we will get to that in a little while.

However, let's start with the most basic thing. Among people who travel a lot _ and I am afraid I have to include myself in that category _ there are only two kinds of baggage: the ones you take on board as carry-ons ... and the ones that get lost.

I have a rule, as many travelers do, to travel with only what I can pack in a carry-on bag. If it doesn't fit, I don't take it. And everything I do take comes with me in the plane's cabin. I have traveled like that from India and China to Thailand and Australia.

I am no exception. It is better to wear your socks and shirts twice than to have to wait for hours checking in your suitcase at the airport and retrieving it upon arrival at your destination. That is, of course, if it does arrive. I recently read an article about all the bags and items that end up being lost at airports and they're enough to fill a museum.

After the discovery of the plot to blow up 10 airplanes from London bound for three American cities _ Washington, New York and Los Angeles _ traveling has become even more complicated. It is no longer possible to take liquids with you: drinking water, eye drops, toothpaste, deodorants, creams... And in every airport the forbidden items are different. You cannot travel with a cell phone, iPod or computer in London. In Miami, you can. And in Latin America, they don't even know yet what to do. It depends on the agent you get.

Besides the fact that traveling is not a pleasure anymore, the real question is whether we are going to get to our destinations alive.

Traveling with my son, I made connections at London's Heathrow Airport to get to and from the Soccer World Cup in Germany. My daughter made the same trip a few weeks later and my mother will do it in a few days. Any of the four of us could be a victim of a bombing on a plane in flight. That is the terror of flying.

And that, the war against terror, is the one worth fighting. We cannot be prisoners of a group of deranged people who, out of religious fanaticism and brainwashing, are willing to commit suicide and take countless people down with them. And all that with the promise of finding 60 or so virgins in heaven.

I still recall, not without nostalgia, the times when terrorists were afraid of dying. I can still remember that, when they hijacked airplanes, police and teams of negotiators assumed that the terrorist wanted to live.

Not anymore.

What surprises me most in these terrorism times is that there are so many young people willing to become martyrs and die for reasons that others, more cowardly, taught them.

However you look at it, there are only two ways to defeat terrorists.

One, by force _ as the British authorities did, dismantling a plan that could have cost thousands of lives. And two, through the world's mass media. If we do not convince these young Muslims aspiring to martyrdom that we, who live in America and Europe, are not the bad guys, nothing will ever change.

That struggle of ideas is the one we are losing. Nobody is telling those youngsters who we really are. And what they see in Iraq and Lebanon makes them even more radical.

There is terror in the air (when we board a plane) because there is confusion on the ground. The war on terror has nothing to do with the decision of the United States and Britain to declare war on Iraq. Nothing.

The war against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified retaliation for the deaths of almost 3,000 on Sept. 11, 2001. But invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein was something quite different.

For many Americans, that war is unjustifiable. According to a recent ABC/Washington Post survey, 62 percent of Americans do not approve of the way President George W. Bush's administration is handling the war in Iraq. Almost 2,600 American soldiers and more than 30,000 Iraqi civilians have died. And those numbers keep growing.

When they couldn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they made up a different excuse: that the real objective was to take democracy to the Arab world. Well, that hasn't been achieved either.

"A low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy," said British Ambassador William Patey, before recently leaving his post in Baghdad.

The war in Iraq has multiplied, not diminished, the terrorist threats.

Let's not confuse things. The war in Iraq, despite everything we hear every day, should not be the highest priority; it has simply been a very costly and lethal diversion.

The real war that needs to be won is the war against the terrorists trying to destroy our way of life and our way of travel. That, for sure, is a war we can all support.