Last week's terrorist attacks oddly remind me of a puzzled moment I had some 20 years ago. I was attending high school in my German hometown near Hamburg. My history teacher had just described how America dealt with West Germany after World War II.

America considered turning West Germany into a powerless society of farmers. The plan was conceived by then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. He believed that militarism was a natural part of German psyche. He thought that something had to be done to lock up this evil forever.

But another American had a different idea. Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed pouring billions of dollars of economic aid into Europe, including West Germany. The American Marshall Plan helped make Germany the mightiest industrial economy in Europe -- laying the foundation for the united, peaceful and secure European Union we know today.

What bewildered me was America's ability to resist the all-too-natural impulse to hate. Just imagine that -- after all the death, destruction and sorrow that Germans had cast upon Americans and on the world.

Some later said that America's generosity to Germany was in reality pure selfishness. America only wanted to secure allies against the communist tide. That may be partially true. But what an enlightened self-interest it was. It seemed to me that if everybody could be selfish like that, the world would be a much better place.

As a 16-year-old, I spent a year as an exchange student in New Jersey. Such programs were another symptom of postwar American efforts to foster cultural understanding between our two countries. Later, after completing my studies in Berlin, I once again returned to the States and have been here more than seven years.

These days, I've been receiving anxious phone calls from family and friends back home. My parents called to say that they were flying the American flag. It is the same one that they first hoisted when I returned from my exchange-student year in 1984. These days, they tell me, many Germans are flying the Star Spangled Banner in my little hometown near Hamburg and, in fact, all over Germany.

I told my parents how impressed I am with the American response to the terrorists' atrocities. I described the unity, the undaunted optimism and determination to make it through and to emerge stronger than before. But I was especially impressed with the appeals by leaders such as President Bush and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to condemn the tendency toward a prejudice-driven backlash against Arab-Americans and Muslims.

Contrasting the reaction to this horrendous event to the internment of 77,000 Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, I praise the wisdom and maturity that America is displaying. As I explained all this to my mother, I thought that maybe, amid this tragedy, lies a great opportunity, a chance to show the world once again all that is good and great about America -- just like after World War II.

So today, I remember again the enlightened self-interest that America displayed toward my people after World War II. I think of the good it brought, including for myself. I hope that America will display its wisdom again by pursuing a double strategy: