By Dan Smith
Global Beat Syndicate
(KRT)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Marines moving north toward Tikrit were approached by two Iraqis near the town of Samarra, some 60 miles north of Baghdad back on April 13. The Iraqis told the Marines that Iraqi army officers had fled the approaching military force, leaving behind seven American POWs. Liberation came quickly. Joy replaced terrible anxiety for seven U.S. families.
How fitting that we found our missing prisoners near Samarra — as if they had unknowingly had an appointment with destiny that would instantly transform the lives of all involved.
That rescue recalls “Appointment in Samarra,” a short tale retold in 1933 by British author W. Somerset Maugham. In the story, a servant begs to borrow his master’s horse to flee Baghdad. In the market earlier that morning, the servant had bumped against another figure. When the figure turned toward him, the servant beheld the threatening gaze of Death. Having lent his servant the horse, the master went to the market and confronted Death, demanding to know why she had threatened his servant. Death responded that her gaze had not been threatening. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
A common interpretation of the story is that we cannot escape our ultimate destiny. But there is a more profound, nuanced question, which was illustrated by the two Iraqis who revealed where to find the prisoners: who — if anyone — bears moral responsibility for initiating a chain of events, especially a potentially fatal one?
In Maugham’s tale, the chain of events begins with the servant’s misinterpretation of Death’s stare, leading him to conclude that to escape Death he must escape Baghdad. Like the servant, we all interpret the world and make decisions, sometimes fateful ones because they have such momentous import that they create new, often unexpected and sometimes unintended consequences. And because it is individuals who always make decisions, no competent person can escape responsibility for the ramifications of his or her decisions.
Thus, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, two Iraqis, reportedly a policeman and a junior officer, were responsible by default for the seven U.S. POWs because all their superiors had disappeared. While they may have been driven by a wish to relieve themselves of any responsibility for the POWs left in their charge, had they not risked meeting Death near Samarra in the form of Marines primed for a fight, our POWs might not have been discovered for days — and may not have been found alive.
On the other side of the gun barrel, the Marine who decided that the two Iraqis posed no imminent suicide or other threat made an important, but different choice. As a soldier in active combat, his duty involved encountering — and not flinching from — Death’s gaze. And indeed, a few days later in Samarra, Death kept an appointment with Iraqi irregulars who attacked another group of Marines passing the town.
But there is a far larger question about Iraq in the context of Maugham’s story: who bears moral responsibility for setting in motion a train of events in which a multitude — armies and even whole nations — suddenly bump into Death and are threatened by her gaze. When they embark on a war such as this one in the name of their citizens, are leaders responsible to the nation for the consequences that flow from their decision?
In the past, U.S. war dead have been mourned but accepted because, except for Vietnam, we have “won” in the end. Our security has been improved and international law was upheld. In Iraq, we clearly won, and with remarkably few casualties. But as we mourn our dead from this war, we must not fortet the other crucial questions of responsible and responsive national leadership. The truth is that the administration has created deep rifts in important international organizations, contravened accepted international law by staging a preventive war, and, by providing new rationales for anti-American terrorists, decreased, rather than increased our security at home and abroad.
There were other choices; there was no time imperative. Had our leaders made a different choice, armies would not have clashed, Iraq would not have been bombed, and combatants and noncombatants would not have bumped Death – and reminded her that she — and they — had an appointment in Samarra.