Omaha, Neb. ? Ken Wohlers thinks Saddam Hussein is a very dangerous man who needs to be removed from power. But Wohlers lies in bed at night worrying that a pre-emptive U.S. military strike against the Iraqi leader may be wrong.

“My religion says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and I guess I think that means you don’t go after people who haven’t gone after you. Yet I feel the evil needs to be done away with,” said Wohlers, 68, a retired salesman.

Brent Stacy, 39, safety director for a Nebraska trucking company, has no such scruples. “We can’t sit back and wait for things to happen, letting them come at us like they did Sept. 11,” said the father of two. “If we can prevent anything terrible from happening by taking the initiative, we should go ahead and do it.”

Diana Abbott, 50, said she remembers the lessons of Pearl Harbor and quotes an old saying when asked about a possible war with Iraq: “Fooled once, shame on you. Fooled twice, shame on me.” The rules have changed, she says. “It’s time to stop being Mr. Nice.”

At lunch tables, coffeehouses and classrooms across America, citizens these days are grappling intensely with questions of war, foreign policy and America’s role in the world. Like these Omaha residents, people are asking whether the Bush administration’s new doctrine of pre-emption of striking first, before others have a chance to launch devastating attacks against America is right, morally or strategically. What kind of example will this set for other countries, they wonder. Who will decide when a threat is serious enough and imminent enough to justify action?

In dozens of interviews with people in this conservative Midwestern city last week, ambivalence about this major foreign-policy shift and the prospect of war with Iraq in general emerged in sharp relief. While polls indicate about two-thirds of Americans favor military action to remove Saddam, people express significant reservations when they begin to consider a pre-emptive strike or acting without the support of allies and the United Nations.

The conversations occurred as Democrats resisted the president’s call for Congress to quickly endorse military action, the U.N. Security Council continued deliberations over sending inspectors to Iraq and British Prime Minister Tony Blair presented his case that Saddam was a growing threat.

Omaha is nestled in America’s heartland, home to the U.S. Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base. It is here that President Bush came the day of the terrorist attacks, seeking a temporary safe harbor. Now, as Bush contemplates a pre-emptive war on a new front, some Americans see a new analogy with Pearl Harbor this time with the U.S. launching a surprise attack to protect itself from a dangerous power.

George Bialac, 63, who sells construction products, found himself following the week’s events with mounting conviction that the U.S. had to act. “I think the evidence is starting to come out that things are a lot worse over there (in Iraq) than we’ve allowed ourselves to believe,” the lifelong Omaha resident said on a recent afternoon over coffee. “Something has to be done to stop Hussein; he’s crazy.”

Even so, Bialac finds himself deeply ambivalent about sending U.S. forces to Iraq. “I am not in favor of going to war. Wars are dangerous, people are going to be hurt. You don’t know what’s going to happen in war; there are no guarantees. But on the other side, how do we get rid of this guy? I don’t know another answer,” said Bialac, a Republican.

Bush and his team have done a poor job of explaining the rationale for war and backing it up with evidence, Bialac suggested, admitting disappointment with his party. “Tell us what the hell is going on,” he said. “It’s our money that will pay for war, and our boys and girls who will be going over.”

President Bush, center, surrounded by House Democrats and Republicans, speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House after he met with them on Iraq. The lawmakers on Thursday told the president they supported his plans to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq with military force if necessary. In Omaha, Neb., at the center of America's heartland, residents aren't exactly speaking with a unified voice about Bush's plans.

KU grad weighs in

Sandy Buda, 47, coach of Omaha’s professional indoor football team, the Omaha Beef, thinks that’s naive.

“Now may not be the time to let everybody know what we know. If we did that, we’d lose what little surprise there is left,” the Kansas University graduate said.

Margie Smith, a marketing director for an Omaha investment firm, having a drink with Buda at a downtown bar, put her position succinctly. “Strike first, answer later.”

The problem as the coach sees it is: “You have one side who plays by the rules, us, and you have another side that doesn’t play by the rules. They changed our lives forever Sept. 11 and what do we do keep taking it? At some point, you’ve got to fight, you’ve got to bully back.”

Smith nods in agreement. “Here’s our rules, you come near us, this is what you get,” she said, raising her fist.

Several miles away, Ellen Scott, 53, also a Republican, was wondering why the U.S. appeared to be rushing into action. She’s the manager of the children’s department at The Bookworm, which bills itself as Omaha’s leading independent bookstore.

“I agree with most of what Bush is doing, but it seems he’s just jumping into this too quickly, acting too much like a cowboy,” said the reserved woman, stopping to ponder U.S. policy on a rainy afternoon as mothers and children wandered amid the bookshelves.

“I think we ought to be paying attention to what these other countries have to say about this, and not just going off on our own saying we can do whatever we want. Why not at least try to let the (U.N.) inspectors go in there and check and see what the situation really is,” Scott added.

Scott pauses a moment, thinking of the worst-case scenario, what would happen if the United States gave Iraq the benefit of the doubt and ended up being attacked. “I certainly don’t want them coming over here and starting anything,” she said, echoing an almost universally expressed view. “But I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is.”

On-campus differences

At the campus of the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Jason Bresley, 22, a senior planning to become an Air Force pilot, doesn’t feel any apprehension about the potential upcoming conflict. “I’m totally supportive of our administration,” he said during a political science class devoted to discussion about the U.S. and Iraq. “I’m very confident in our capabilities. These guys are a threat against civilization, and they’ve got to go.”

Michele Kruz, 23, whose husband is in the Air Force, is more skeptical. “We’re spending a lot of resources in Afghanistan, and that’s still going on. They say we can fight two wars simultaneously, but I think we’re going to be spread too thin. At the least, I’d like to see us have full U.N. support.”

Josh Weir, 23, an offensive tackle on UNO’s football team, lays out the case for taking an aggressive stand. “Hussein has already attacked Kuwait. For 10 years he’s been defying the United Nations. The world has to say at some point, ‘You’ve been breaking the rules, you have to stop.’

“Maybe if the previous administration had done a pre-emptive attack on (Osama) bin Laden, we could have prevented 9-11. Maybe if we take Hussein out now, we can prevent another 9-11.”

Kay Wise, 61, a Democrat and an information systems analyst pursuing a doctorate in history at the university, has problems with that kind of reasoning. “The idea of first strike bothers me enormously. Think of what all of us are taught from the time we’re children: Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Lashing out makes us the bully and could actually increase the resentment people in other parts of the world feel toward the U.S.,” making the country even more vulnerable to future terrorism, Wise said.

“The best weapon against terrorism isn’t military force. It’s preaching and practicing the principles of democracy and humanity.”

No easy task

No one feels the potential risks of armed conflict more acutely than the veterans of World War II and the Korean War who meet every Wednesday for hamburger night at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in west Omaha.

“We’re old enough to know what the hell can happen,” said Grethyl Hanson, 76, whose husband served in Korea.

She asks why the United States is so confident it will be able to take out Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, when it has encountered its fair share of difficulties in the war on terrorism. “Have we found bin Laden yet? We’ve been after him for a year now. Who says we’re going to get Saddam so easy?” the pro-Bush Republican grandmother says.

“We’re going to need all the support we can get, and not just from Europe. We need help from those Arab countries too,” chimed in Deanna Wolf, a Democrat who voted for Bush. “We could be facing germ warfare, biological warfare, maybe even nuclear warfare. We’ve just got to have international support.”

Her husband, Dick, snorts. “We should have taken care of Hussein the first time round when we were there. Now it’s going to cost us thousands of lives, and who knows how much money.”

But unlike his wife, the World War II veteran doesn’t believe in slowing things down to bring a reluctant U.N. Security Council more fully on board. “(Saddam) is going to come after us,” he said. “Every day we wait, it’s that much more danger to our country.

“We can’t worry about our allies. We were the ones who were attacked. We’ve got to think of ourselves first, this time around. This is our job now.”