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 Baghdad’s 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 England’s 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 Lessing’s 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, let’s 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 didn’t 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 hero’s 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 Lessing’s 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 didn’t 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 nation’s 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]
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