Dan Rather "A SINGLE death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." This statement, attributed to Josef Stalin, ranks among the more cynical quotes of the 20th century, because it came from a man responsible for the deaths of many millions of people. But it also recognises a central human truth - that we tend to respond to the death and distress of individuals more than we do to collective suffering. This is the human way, to gain a better emotional hold on faces and names than we do on numbers.
Stalin's cynical formula is working in reverse now, in Iraq. It is employed by hostage-takers who seek not to kill many, but to kill a relative few, who desire not to make their victims faceless but to show their anguished faces and cries to the world, to their victims' home nations, to their victims' families and friends. And, in so doing, these cold-blooded killers hope to move international policy.
EXPLOSIVE DEVICES
These hostage-takings are of a piece with the car bombs that kill Iraqi civilians and police recruits, and with the improvised explosive devices that have exacted such a heavy toll in life and limb from U.S. and coalition forces. But they are also different in an important way that preys on a nation's collective psyche.
When a nation learns about deaths from terrorist attacks, as with deaths in conventional combat, it is already too late to save the victims; there is nothing to do but to mourn, and to make vows to bring murderers to justice. With hostage-takings, however, the primary aim of the kidnappers is to make governments and citizens believe that something can be done, still, to save the hostages namely, acceding to the hostage-takers' demands.
IMPERFECT COUNT
So far, an imperfect count puts the number of foreign that is, non-Iraqi hostages taken in Iraq at more than 130. Of these, some 81 have been freed or rescued, and 25 have been killed. More than 20 are thought to still be in custody or are considered missing.
Each hostage-taking episode has been excruciating for the respective nation involved, and the responses of individual nations have varied. Some, such as the Philippines, have appeared to give in, at least in part, to terrorist demands that they leave Iraq. Others, such as the United States and Great Britain, feel that they self-evidently cannot allow their foreign policies to be held hostage along with unfortunate individuals.
This is a barbaric and bloody business, the slow-motion dooming of civilian contractors and military personnel. The method of beheading that has become the terrorists' preferred style of execution contributes, it seems reasonable to say, to the sense that Iraq is slipping further into lawlessness. But do the hostage-takings sap the will of those back home to continue the mission in Iraq?
In the United States, at least, one senses that these killings, taken by themselves, do not. In fact, by stirring outrage, they might well have the opposite effect. But they also might be making the business of rebuilding Iraq more difficult, as there are reports that it is becoming harder for contractors operating inside Iraq on reconstruction projects to find workers willing to risk becoming hostages themselves.
If this is, in fact, the case, and if this trend magnifies what effect will it have on the overall Iraq mission? This is one concern among many in the Iraq experience, and it is difficult, at best, to measure its relative weight. But as the world witnesses the grim parade of hostages and executions, it might be something to consider alongside the individual tragedies that shake us all.
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster (c) 2004 DJR Inc. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
