Reply #22: I have to disagree. AG did not result from militarism or de-humanization.

[TacticalPeek]

If anything, military training should have prevented AG, and probably would have, provided there was good leadership in the chain of command all the way to the top.

A very revealing study was conducted over thirty years ago by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford, with astounding findings. ABC's Nightline looked back on it recently.

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Prison experiment revealed 'descent into hell'

PM - Monday, 10 May , 2004 18:31:10
Reporter: Michael Vincent

MARK COLVIN: The images from the Abu Ghraib prison have shocked the world, but they haven't surprised an eminent professor of psychology in the US, because he's seen something very like them before. It was 33 years ago that Professor Philip Zimbardo carried out a landmark experiment at Stanford University, using 24 student volunteers as guards and prisoners.

The 1971 experiment was supposed to last a fortnight, but it had to be called off after just six days. During that time the prisoners were stripped naked, had bags placed on their heads and were made to simulate sex, in strikingly similar imagery to photos now coming out of Iraq.

Professor Zimbardo, who has become a specialist in the prison environment, says his 1971 experiment does not excuse those reservists who are implicated in the Iraqi prison abuses. As he's been telling Michael Vincent, superiors all the way up the chain of command should also be held responsible.

PHILIP ZIMBARDO: There is direct parallels. The Stanford prison study was designed to go two weeks. I ended it after six days because it was getting out of control because it was seeing similar things as to what happened in Iraq. By similar things I mean the guards stripping the prisoners naked at any excuse, humiliating them, degrading them, putting bags over their heads, chaining them together, then finally, and this is after just four or five days, the guards are doing homophobic things to the prisoners. I mean the guards are telling them "bend over, you're female camels" to one group, second group of prisoners, they're saying "you're male camels, hump them" and they're laughing because it's a play on words, hump, you know.

MICHAEL VINCENT: This is a psychological experiment with students, educated kids, 33 years ago?

PHILIP ZIMBARDO: These are college students, American college students I'm saying from all over the country, who were chosen after clinical interviews, a battery of psychological tests, they had no history of crime, no history of drug addiction, no history of psychology pathology disturbance, the most ordinary, but intelligent young men, randomly assigned as prisoners and guards.

We ended the study, not only because the guards were doing those terrible things, but four of the prisoners who we chose because they were normal and healthy were having emotional breakdowns, had to be sent to student health.

My sense is that what I saw was a microcosm of what happens in all prisons, that the prison in AG is only dramatic because we have these vivid pictures.

more
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1105314.htm

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It is military training that should enable a commander to tell prison guards "Do not abuse my prisoners." and confidently expect his soldiers to overcome the temptations of power and secrecy. And lest I or Zimbardo be misinterpreted, one more quote from the link:


MICHAEL VINCENT: But at what point will people take responsibility for what has happened in the Abu Ghraib prison? Do you think that the reservists who have been seen in these photos will use, for example, your experiment, your work as an excuse for what they've done, or do you think they should be held accountable?

PHILIP ZIMBARDO: Oh no, no, okay, let me make really one thing clear. I'm not talking about- psychology is not excusiology. What I'm saying is, we can understand what the social psychological processes of transformation were operative in that situation. It does not excuse the behaviour.

I'm saying they were guilty. Guilt is- I'm making a distinction between guilt and blame. That is, in a sense, the model is a public health model. These guys were caught in an epidemic of war, okay, and so they are not the source of the epidemic. The source of the epidemic is whoever put them in harm's way, whoever put, whoever created the war in the first place, and secondly, who did not give them supervision, who created a prison which was veiled in secrecy, not open to lawyers, not open to human rights groups, not open to Amnesty International, not open to family. That secrecy always, always, everywhere invites corruption and these guys are simply carrying out orders.

They are, they will be tried and be guilty. Who should be tried is George Bush. Who should be tried is Rumsfeld. Who should be tried is his assistant, Wolfowitz. Who should be tried is the generals who set up this prison to fail. That's all I'm saying, is we have to start blaming the barrel and not simply saying there are a few bad apples who corrupted the barrel. No, the barrel corrupts most of the people in it and for me that's the barrel of war.