Abu
Ghraib: Ordinary Folk or
Human Aberrations?
By Linda S. Heard
27 August, 2004
Arab News
Everything, everything in war is
barbaric... but the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively
to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their
whole being, wrote the late Swedish author Ellen Kay.
If one goes along
with the defense of we were simply following orders put
forward by the American military at Baghdads notorious Abu Ghraib
prison, while images of them celebrating pyramids of their naked, bruised,
beaten and humiliated handiwork with grins and thumbs-up, she may have
a point.
On Sunday four American
soldiers Corporal Charles Graner, Specialist Megan Ambuhl, Staff
Sergeant Ivan Frederick and Specialist Javal Davis appeared before
a military judge accused of assault, coercion and conspiracy to mistreat
prisoners. The hearing which took place in Germany to
decide whether the four should be court-martialed, was subsequent to
a similar hearing in the US when Private Lyndie England, said senior
officers encouraged her to abuse detainees so as to soften them
up.
Even so, this does
not account for the glee apparent on Englands face as she dragged
around one supine prisoner on a leash and gloated over the distress
and embarrassment of another.
Hers was no enforced
plastic smile but that of someone out on the town enjoying a jolly good
time.
So is England
facing up to 38 years jail time along with the other accused
innately monstrous? Are they naturally depraved human beings who were
coincidentally thrown together at Abu Ghraib? Are they exceptions to
the rule?
According to the
New York-based Human Rights First group, which claims the US is holding
thousands of suspects clandestinely at more than two-dozen detention
centers, the secrecy surrounding those incarceration facilities makes
inappropriate detention and abuse, not only likely, but inevitable.
So what drove Lyndie
England, the kind of homely small town girl Americans might be tempted
to take home to mother for apple pie, and the others, to participate
in the torture of Iraqi men and boys with such evident pleasure?
Here, author Dora
Lessings account of The Milgram Experiment could be
enlightening: The Milgram experiment was prompted by curiosity
into how it is that ordinary, decent, kindly people, like you and me,
will do abominable things when ordered to do them ...
The researcher
put into one room people chosen at random who were told that they were
taking part in an experiment. A screen divided the room in such a way
that they could hear but not see into the other part. In this second
part volunteers sat apparently wired-up to a machine that administered
electric shocks of increasing severity up to the point of death, like
the electric chair.
This machine
indicated to them how they had to respond to the shocks with
grunts, then groans, then screams, then pleas that the experiment should
terminate. The person in the first half of the room believed the person
in the second half was, in fact, connected to the machine.
He was told his
job was to administer increasingly severe shocks according to the instructions
of the experimenter and to ignore the cries of pain and pleas from the
other side of the screen.
Now here comes the
surprise. Even after hearing screams of pain sixty-two percent
of the people tested continued to administer shocks up to the 450 volts
level. At the 285-volt level the guinea pig had given an agonized scream
and became silent.
The people administering
what they believed were extremely painful doses of electricity...went
on doing it. Afterward most could not believe they were capable of such
behavior. Some said: Well...I was only carrying out instructions.
Another important
factor to consider when assessing why those American jailors behaved
in the disgusting way they did is what is known as the group mind.
Most humans strive to be liked by their contemporaries and are influenced
by the herding instinct. Therefore, if one dominant jailer was able
to convince the rest they were doing the right thing in the name of
patriotism, lets say, the likelihood is that some of the others
would put aside their own morals in favor of not rocking the boat.
Carol Travis wrote
in a 1991 New York Times article: Our nation, for all its celebration
of the Lone Ranger and the independent pioneer, does not really value
the individual... again and again, countless studies have shown that
people will go along rather than risk the embarrassment of being disobedient,
rude or disloyal.
A hero who dared
to follow his own conscience was Hugh C. Thompson Junior, a helicopter
pilot during the Vietnam War. In 1968, Thompson rescued a group of Vietnamese
civilians who came under fire by his own countrymen at Mai Lai. Some
300 unarmed Vietnamese, including women and children, were slaughtered
on that dark day but the American people didnt get to hear about
it until a year later when the story was broken by award-winning journalist
Seymour Hersh the same investigative reporter who first exposed
the horrors of Abu Ghraib.
Thompson, who showed
compassion for his fellow men and women, was condemned by his hometown
upon his return to the US. Instead a heros welcome was afforded
to those who had committed acts, later acknowledged as atrocities. Indeed,
it was 28 years before the US military saw fit to acknowledge his courage
and moral standing.
Doris Lessings
reflections on WW2 should, surely, serve as a wake-up call for all of
us. She wrote: When I look back at World War II, I see something
I didnt more than dimly suspect at the time. It was that everyone
was crazy. I am not talking of aptitudes for killing, for destruction,
which soldiers are taught as part of their training, but a kind of atmosphere,
the invisible poison, which spreads everywhere. And then people everywhere
began behaving, as they never could in peacetime.
Afterward
we look back, amazed. Did I really do that? Believe that? Fall for that
bit of propaganda? Think that all our enemies were evil? That all our
nations acts were good?
The Abu Ghraib torturers
are, no doubt, similarly wondering. And although they should be held
to account, those further up the chain of command, responsible for the
culture in which they worked, should not be exempt.
Linda S.
Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs and welcomes
feedback at [email protected]