With the opening of the Olympic Games approaching, fear is in the air.

If they are on orange alert in New York, they are on burnt orange status in Athens. There, the Greek government and International Olympic Committee have spent more money on security than the gross national product of some of the third world countries which will compete in the Games. Yet, despite all those expenditures, there remains a sense of unease around these first Olympic Games since Sept. 11.

It is a fear of the unknown, a fear of what might be, a fear that despite having expended an estimated $7.2 billion dollars on this quadrennial sporting celebration — including $1.5 billion on security - the Greeks are not ready for the world. A fear, most of all, that an event that began as an effort to bring countries together through sport could, with one terrible disaster, become a symbol of how far the world has strayed from that ideal.

It has been well publicized that some of the venues are not yet complete with the Games just days away. And Athens’ choking traffic problems — a survey recently showed traffic moving at an average of just 6 mph in key parts of the city — have not been eased despite the reopening of a long-unused tram system. This has caused IOC officials to wonder how ambulances and service vehicles could get to an emergency if needed.

Then again, they may not have to worry about that because Athens’ ambulance drivers are threatening a strike. So it goes.

Security personnel for these games will outnumber the 10,000 athletes 7 to 1. Still, countries like the United States and Israel are providing their own armed security for their athletes — even though it is forbidden for foreigners in Greece to carry weapons.

Publicly, the American and Greek governments have agreed it is the Greeks’ responsibility to provide the only armed security force at the Games. But privately, U.S. Special Forces have been deployed to guard American athletes while the Israeli team will live in a portion of the Olympic Village surrounded by a massive protective wall it's hoped no terrorist can scale. The fear, unfortunately, is that there is no such wall anywhere in the world any more.

In addition to international terrorist groups that would love to disrupt the Games, Greece has its own well-known domestic terror organization, November 17, which regularly is involved in violent mischief and bombings.

What has resulted from this is a fear of the unknown so great that only about a third of the 5.3 million tickets for the various events have been sold. American tourism is also off between 20 to 30 percent from four years ago in Sydney, the last Olympics not haunted by the long, dark shadow of terrorism.

The fear of terror led to at least one American Olympian pulling out of the Games and there have been others internationally. That tourism is down so markedly speaks loudly to the ravages of fear — and that is what real terrorism is all about. It is about often small but savage acts that have a rippling effect on society as a whole, convincing it to abandon the normal flow of life.

It has turned these Olympics into an armed camp where the U.S. Sixth Fleet patrols the Mediterranean, NATO forces walk the streets along with a local force estimated at 70,000 and fear hides in the background every time someone gets on the subway or enters a stadium or arena.

This is no way for an Olympics to be run. But perhaps there is no other way, since those jets flew into the World Trade Center and changed forever how we view the world — and how the world views America.

Adding to the sense of foreboding is a fear that the tiny country of Greece, birthplace of both the original Olympic Games and the modern variety, is simply not ready or able to handle such an event. The Greeks deny this, and surely they have done their best, but the reports of many loose ends — like unfinished competition areas and power outages, plus the fact that NBC, which will televise the Games, has hired its own security team to protect its broadcasters and urged them not to bring their families — has left a sense of danger barely being held off at gunpoint.

Add to these problems the growing scandal among U.S. athletes accused of doping and the fear someone will come up dirty at the Games. Plus the rampant nationalism that led U.S. Olympic Committee officials to unwisely announce this week that their objective is for American athletes to win 100 medals only increases the sense that somehow what the Olympic Games were meant to be has been lost on the world today.

The greater loss, however, would be for freedom-loving people to cower in fear of the unknown few intent on using violence and intimidation for their own foul ends. The world needs to support the people of Greece, who have spent more money than they have and worked tirelessly to do what they probably were not equipped to pull off.

The world needs to come to Athens, cheer the athletes from countries large and small and, most of all, let the terrorists know that while they may create fear, they cannot break the spirit of the Olympic movement, which has for so long been the story of triumph over hate and ignorance and the attempt to create international fellowship on the playing fields even when it doesn’t exist in the world.

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