It felt like a normal Sunday afternoon, except that suddenly we were at war. As television reports came in that U.S. and British forces had begun bombing Afghanistan, it became clear that the battle between us and a portion of the Arab-Muslim world has been joined. They hit us first, leaving more than 6,000 dead, and the United States had no choice but to strike back.

This, however, is going to be a different kind of war than any we've seen in a long time. It won't be like the Gulf War, where the United States sent soldiers to intervene in a dispute between two exotic countries, and where the impact was felt only by those soldiers and their families. Nor will it be like Vietnam, where tens of thousands of Americans perished, but our homeland remained virtually untouched. This war is going to affect us in profound ways.

Just watch the videotape of a statement that was made by Osama bin Laden, presumably before yesterday's bombing of Afghanistan began, and which was played on television yesterday. Denouncing what he called U.S. "aggression against the Muslim lands," he called on Muslims all over the world to join the fight against the United States.

"I swear by God," he said, that no one in the United States, "from north to south and east to west" will feel safe until the Palestinians feel safe and until U.S. troops withdraw from the holy places of the Muslim lands.

I've written before about what I believe are the reasons for the growing hatred of the United States within the Muslim world. Some readers saw this as an attempt to rationalize the bloody attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but they weren't. They were only a statement of fact, and bin Laden confirmed them yesterday: among other things, Muslim fury over the U.S. military presence in Muslim countries, the continuing misery of the Palestinians, and 1 million children dead in Iraq as a result of the Gulf War and U.S. sanctions.

Americans can dismiss this strange-looking man in the camouflage jacket and the long beard as a fly who will eventually be squashed by our superior military power. But his call for a war by the Muslims of the world against the United States is more than just an idle threat. This could set the stage for a world war.

After the bombing started yesterday, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations said he regretted that no diplomatic solution had been found to prevent a military strike on Afghanistan, and that he hoped it would end soon. Now the government of Pakistan is nervous, afraid that the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan could fuel an uprising by Islamic militants in Pakistan. The scary thing for us is that the current government could be overthrown by Islamic militants, who would then control Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

This war is already hurting us here at home. There are thousands of dead bodies. Americans are afraid to ride airplanes. Forty-five hundred members of the National Guard are on alert in New York City. And, last night in Los Angeles, they cancelled the Emmy Awards because the actors felt that to go ahead with them would be in bad taste.

This war has affected our foreign policy as well. Last week, the Bush administration announced a profound policy change in the Mideast, declaring that it now supports the idea of a separate Palestinian state.

Americans keep insisting that we won't let bin Laden and his band of terrorists change our way of life, but they already have.

Yesterday President Bush went on television and told the American people that we will win this battle against terrorism "by the patient accumulation of successes." I hope he's right. But it's become increasingly clear that the United States may have overplayed its hand in the Mideast, and what's different now is that the terrorists know how to strike back at us.

Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.

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