In the case of the July 23 attack on the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, it has shown Czechs to be pretty much like any Western democracy these days: shaken, confused ... and determined to carry on doing exactly as before.

Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, using words Tony Blair might have chosen, said such tragedies are no reason to retreat from the world, arguing that Czechs could just as easily be done in by falling off a ladder at their country cottage.

Political pronouncements aside, Czech travelers themselves were most eloquent in their reaction: Just as hundreds of tourists holidaying in Egypt cut their trips short to fly home to Prague and Ostrava, another flight loaded with hundreds bound for new holidays in Egypt set off from the Czech Republic.

In the United States, it's a well-known axiom in the travel industry that such vacationers cancel trips in droves when a favored destination is the target of a terrorist attack. In fact, the head of the Czech Tourist Authority attributes this year's flood of U.S. tourists to the Czech Republic to pent-up demand following canceled trips after the 9/11 attacks and the Prague floods of 2002.

Clearly, Czechs aren't much troubled by such things — or, if they are, they don't let such worries affect their plans or lives much.

Though the young Czech man killed in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Petr Kořán of Ústí nad Labem, was almost certainly not an intended target, his fate shows the real risk of travel by anyone to virtually any place where there's a concentration of vulnerable targets perceived to be somehow in league with the West.

London's continued bombings this month show the kind of deliberate targeting of people from countries involved in the Iraq War — which, of course, includes the Czech Republic.

As for the chance of Prague suffering attacks as Madrid and London have, or kidnappings of citizens abroad, such as Italy has seen, Czech columnist Martin Komárek writes in the Czech daily Mladá fronta Dnes that only two things would likely eliminate that risk: a withdrawal from the Iraq War occupation forces and the Czech government forbidding its citizens from traveling abroad. The writer then points out: "The government cannot terminate treaties of alliance and cannot basically curb civic freedoms, even if it wanted to. Let us hope that it does not."

Komárek's point is that in a nation where tight state control was the rule for most of its post-World War II history, the citizenry cannot look to the state to keep it safe from threats. Therefore, expanding its powers again would only create a new threat — from within.

In the meantime, Czechs continue to be valuable U.S. allies, and the Czech Army is actively involved in training Iraq's police force — a group that constitutes one of the terrorists' favorite and frequent targets.

It says much about the sophistication of this young republic that it honors its treaties so highly while its civilian citizens continue to travel more and farther to exotic places around the world, many of them Islamic states. It's also a growing tradition in the Czech Republic for students to take a year off before settling into careers to live in developing nations, whether in Southeast Asia, on the subcontinent or in South America.