AP Wire Service

Security was tight and attitudes firm at Selfridge Air National Guard Base after the start of the U.S. counterattack on Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors.

Nearly 500 Michigan National Guard members and reservists have been called to active duty since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

``We're ready and willing to do whatever is directed of us to do if we get the call,'' Tech. Sgt. Karen Brun of the 927th Air Refueling Wing of the Air Force Reserve told the Detroit Free Press.

Richard Carroll of Ubly, a technical sergeant with the 127th Air National Guard at the base in Macomb County near Mount Clemens, said he, too, is ready.

``When I said `I do,' that meant that `I will,''' he said Sunday. ``If I didn't want to go, I wouldn't have signed up.''

Around Michigan, people generally applauded the Bush administration for launching attacks on Afghanistan on Sunday. But those words of support were tempered by anxiety, particularly from the families of service people and from people with family ties to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Dan Call, a 22-year-old Navy SEAL commando from Fowlerville, is ready for whatever he may face, his mother Maureen told the Lansing State Journal.

``I just know that he is very well-trained and that I have all the confidence in the world in him,'' Call said. ``If something happens to him, I know he wouldn't have it any other way.''

Joseph Kinsman of Avoca is father of Petty Officer 2nd Class Crystal Kinsman, 19, a sailor aboard the USS Arctic.

The Arctic is a Navy combat support vessel believed to be in the Arabian Sea.

``I'm going to e-mail her and see if she can respond,'' he told the Times Herald of Port Huron.

Gerald Kellogg of Corunna said Sunday that he had not heard from his son John, a Navy petty officer on the USS Pearl Harbor, based in San Diego, Calif. They last spoke about a week after the terror attacks.

``It bothers me. I feel bad such things as this have to happen,'' Kellogg said. ``But we've got to show somebody we mean business. If they don't believe us, we've got to prove it to them.''

Khalid Sekander of Detroit, a native of Afghanistan, was in the shower Sunday when his wife called out, ``Honey, it's started! We're bombing your homeland!''

Sekander quickly dried off and tuned in to CNN. ``Here we go again,'' he recalled thinking. ``Another cascade of bombs from another country.''

Sekander, a 38-year-old lawyer, immigrated with his parents when he was 7. He said he feared the people of Afghanistan might become unintended victims of the bombings. Even so, he endorsed the American military effort.

``I fully support the U.S. in removing this cancer called the Taliban and the cult figure Osama from our soil,'' he told The Detroit News.

Sekander said Monday that his homeland has suffered from decades of unbelievable destruction.

``First it was the Soviets, then it was the religious people, then it was the civil war. Now it is the Americans,'' he said. ``So everyone is getting a piece of Afghanistan.''

Iraq-born Nida Samona, Southfield City Council president, said she hoped Americans would unite behind the military action.

``I just hope that this is contained to those who were involved and not to all of the Middle East,'' she told The Oakland Press of Pontiac. ``We need to get the people who did this, but not let it spread.''

For some children, the fighting in Afghanistan hit close to home.

``Will there be a war in Dearborn?'' 7-year-old Alison Jawad, a Lebanese-American, asked her mother.

``No,'' Michelle Jawad reassured her. ``The fighting is a long way from here.''