YOU can just imagine the reaction to the dreadful events in Bali of the die-hard hawks who for the last few weeks have been saying bashing the hell out of Saddam is the answer to all the world's ills.

And no, it won't be 'sorry guys, we've been chasing the wrong man'. It will be a pointing, accusatory finger and a baleful cry of 'we told you so'.

What happened in Bali sickens me - and not only because of the appalling suffering and loss of life, but because of the way it added spurious fuel to the cause of the warmongers.

Actually, if you look at it rationally, Bali has exposed Bush's lust for war against Saddam for what it always was - a despicable, vicious urge to settle a personal score by a man desperate to find someone to lash out at after the phantoms of Al-Qaeda vanished into thin air.

It didn't matter to him that - just as happened in Afghanistan - tens of thousands of ordinary, innocent people would be maimed and killed or have their homes and lives destroyed.

Why should it? They weren't Americans. Not even that quasi, sub-standard species of American known as the Brit.

Now, suddenly - go on, you warmongers, admit it - all thought of a war on Saddam seems hopelessly irrelevant. Which just exposes what a sham it always was.

But while Saddam's cronies - and the millions of innocent Iraqis about whom nobody gives a damn - may be heaving a sigh of relief (assuming that Iraq now gets put on Bush's backburner), the rest of the world today is in a sorry, uncertain, dangerous state.

Bali, the 'paradise island' in an azure sea, has suddenly exploded on to the world stage in the most appalling way.

What happened was awful, shocking, an outrage. On that every sane person can agree. The question we each have to ask ourselves now is, what should our reaction be?

Our compassion for the victims of the Bali bomb is absolutely right - whether they be young Britons, Americans and Australians, or local Balinese.

Is our anger right, too? Yes, of course it is. We're only human, after all, and if something like this does not make us angry, then what could?

But does that mean we have to act on that anger? No - not even when we read the harrowing accounts of the young people returning from the hell that Bali briefly became; not even when we consider that whoever perpetrated this act targeted it deliberately, coolly and ruthlessly at tourists - at people like you and me.

It is very easy at times like this for a rush of national outrage, a hardening of 'them' and 'us' attitudes and a vindictive, vengeful need to hurt.

We have to resist that.

The polarisation of the world into two camps, Islam vs the Rest, is just what the bombers want.

The search for those responsible must go on: and when found, they must be dealt with in accordance with international law.

But at the same time we all - Christian, Muslim and Jew, American, Indonesian and Iraqi alike - must redouble our efforts to try to understand each other's point of view.

Kicking butt isn't the answer: it just heightens the hatred.

Instead, those with the power and wealth to do so - ie us and our American big brothers - must start doing something to stamp out the inequalities in the world in which the kind of hatreds that led to Bali can breed.

If Bush wants a war, let him have a war on want instead.

Then there may be a gleam of hope on the horizon.

- This week, Chris Titley's column has been written by Stephen Lewis.

Updated: 12:28 Wednesday, October 16, 2002