Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Not much just about war

Thursday, March 13, 2003 | 8:46 a.m.

JERUSALEM -- After boarding bus No. 480 in Tel Aviv I became aware that my eyes were watching each passenger coming aboard. What is under that long yellow slicker worn by a rather nervous young man? What's in the backpack carried by that dark and muscular man? Is that religious man with the long black coat and beard really a bomber in disguise?

Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers have dressed as Israeli soldiers and religious Jews to carry out their deadly missions. It was but a few days ago that two terrorists, dressed like religious Jews, entered Kiryat Arba and killed Rabbi Eli Horowitz and his wife, Dina.

Soon the bus was out of the city and I began to enjoy the green foliage made bright by recent rains. Mixed in the green was the gold of mustard flowers and black-eyed susans. Then along the hillsides were the olive trees and soon we were in Jerusalem at the central bus depot going through a security check. The smell of baked sweets and dates permeated the station and I lingered long enough for a sweet roll and cup of Turkish coffee.

Later, upon returning to the bus station to catch the No. 405 bus back to Tel Aviv, I had time to recall my earlier thoughts when passengers were loading up No. 480 bus in that city. Also coming to mind was a column written by former President Jimmy Carter in the Jerusalem Post newspaper. I have known the former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner for more than 30 years. I know of no other American who has done so much to improve the lives of people all over the world. He has allowed me and many others to help him bring a democratic government to Nicaragua and improve the lives of people in our own country.

Carter's column makes clear that he believes attacking Iraq at this time would not be a just war. He lays down several criteria that must be met to declare a war just and then shows why he believes the present situation doesn't meet those requirements. I don't have the space to argue each of his points and with some I agree.

Carter writes that a just "war's weapons must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants." He then uses Gen. Tommy R. Franks,' our commander of forces in and around Iraq, concern about "many of the military targets being near hospitals, schools, mosques and private homes."

Personally, I don't see how you can separate combatants and non-combatants when they are the same people.

Isn't the woman who helps her husband make a bomb or youngster who throws a hand grenade a combatant? How about the man who drives the suicide bomber to the bus depot and then goes to dinner at home? Or the imam who hides an explosive belt in the mosque where the killer can pick it up to be used for murder?

Americans in Lebanon learned more than 20 years ago how killers had their headquarters in the first and second stories of a building and then the upper stories were used for hospitals or schools. Almost 250 American families first learned about suicide bombers in Lebanon, where their loved ones served and died as U.S. Marines.

Saddam Hussein wants to draw our fighting men into Baghdad and other urban areas where everybody can take a crack at them. Urban warfare today can't be fought by the rules of a "just" war. There has never been a good war, but fighting in cities is the most nasty for infantrymen. As a former combat platoon sergeant, I can tell you that rather than lose one man in a building I will first use explosives to blow it down. If the gunmen hiding in that building had as much love for their own people as I have for my men, they wouldn't be using them for shields.

The days of knights fighting each other with swords or one rifleman trying to outfox another rifleman are long gone. That's not the way fighting or terrorism is practiced in the Middle East. Terrorism and war is the same thing in the minds of many. A good example is the young man who gave his unsuspecting pregnant girl friend a bomb to carry on an airliner in London.

Bus No. 405 was now loading and, along with a dozen high school football fans and an equal number of shoppers and soldiers, I climbed aboard. It was getting dark so I put away my pen, watched the rain hit the windows and dozed off.