Colin Powell's former chief of staff said that the Abu Ghraid situation came from a combination from extraordinary pressure from the vice president's office to get results and a complete lack of rules to govern where one draws the line in maintaining and questioning prisoners.
This situation seems similar to the Greek Torturer study as well as studies done regarding Vietnam Veterans of War - who have stated that they are placed by superiors in situations where torture is not only condoned but demanded. In each situation the torturer is selected based on his/her views regarding the prisoners and those view are to a degree emphasized and encouraged. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are encouraged to take out your aggressions on an individual who represents all the attributes you hate and told they are not human? A corollary might be Faith in BTVS who begins to believe that as long as he/she is a villian, evil - it is okay. In these scenarios personality and family/school history play definite roles. Same with Nazi Germany - where British prisoners of Christian or Gentile descent, not exhibiting homosexual tendencies - were treated far kinder, than say Slavs, Jews, Homosexuals, and Romanian Gypsies. If you fit into the Gypsies, Homosexual or Jewish category - you were sent to Aushwitz. These groups were demonized and dehumanized in the public view not unlike Muslims, individuals of conservative Arabic descent and Palestinians are viewed in Abu Gharib. What is interesting is the torturers in Abu Gharib may have been the tortured in Nazi Germany. Israel is noted by Amnesty International for it's poor treatment of Arab and Palestinan prisoners for instance. The victims and torturers can change roles. And when I was visiting family, I ran into a couple who honestly believed that the prisoners in Abu Gharib deserved the torture because of what they did to the World Trade Center and the torturers angry at their circumstances, missing their families and angry at what happened to bring them their - acted on that anger. It's the displacement of anger. We are angry, we want to hurt something - and someone hands us something to torture. BattleStar Galatitica actually handled this subject rather well in three episodes - one in Season 1, where Starbuck is told to torture a Cylon prisoner - he is human, but she keeps calling him a machine, nothing, and as long as she sees him as a machine - she doesn't worry about trying to drown him, refusing him food, or beating him. After all he can't feel can he? They revisit the scenario again in an episode called Pegasus, where the commander, Kain, encourages her men to rape and torture a pregnant female cylon. Kain has seen half her fleet exterminated. Over 500 people killed. Torn to bits. She hates the Cylons to the point that they have become an obsession, they are demons to her - and she feels she is justified in torturing and killing them.
It seems that almost anyone could be a torturer, but I don't think everyone could be one--a few people I'm sure would choose to resist the combination of pressure and knowledge that there would be no reprisal.
I agree. In all of the studies - only 65% or at a least a third of the participants showed these tendencies. Not everyone did. That does not mean however the other participants may not show these tendencies if the situation was different. We are motivated by different things and I'm not sure we can know for certain what could cause us to do something horrible. That said, I do think we have the ability to choose and that by no means are our choices necessarily consistent or predictable. Just because the object of our worste nightmares appears before us -ready to be tortured does not mean we will do it - as evidenced in BattleStar Galatica (President Roslin and Adama do veer away from it and fight against it even though both have good cause not to), BTVS (Buffy resists the urge to torture Spike when he becomes harmless in Pangs, at least to a degree). But we can't know one way or the other until we are in the situation.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-11-05 04:47 pm (UTC)This situation seems similar to the Greek Torturer study as well as studies done regarding Vietnam Veterans of War - who have stated that they are placed by superiors in situations where torture is not only condoned but demanded. In each situation the torturer is selected based on his/her views regarding the prisoners and those view are to a degree emphasized and encouraged. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are encouraged to take out your aggressions on an individual who represents all the attributes you hate and told they are not human? A corollary might be Faith in BTVS who begins to believe that as long as he/she is a villian, evil - it is okay. In these scenarios personality and family/school history play definite roles. Same with Nazi Germany - where British prisoners of Christian or Gentile descent, not exhibiting homosexual tendencies - were treated far kinder, than say Slavs, Jews, Homosexuals, and Romanian Gypsies. If you fit into the Gypsies, Homosexual or Jewish category - you were sent to Aushwitz. These groups were demonized and dehumanized in the public view not unlike Muslims, individuals of conservative Arabic descent and Palestinians are viewed in Abu Gharib.
What is interesting is the torturers in Abu Gharib may have been the tortured in Nazi Germany. Israel is noted by Amnesty International for it's poor treatment of Arab and Palestinan prisoners for instance. The victims and torturers can change roles. And when I was visiting family, I ran into a couple who honestly believed that the prisoners in Abu Gharib deserved the torture because of what they did to the World Trade Center and the torturers angry at their circumstances, missing their families and angry at what happened to bring them their - acted on that anger. It's the displacement of anger. We are angry, we want to hurt something - and someone hands us something to torture. BattleStar Galatitica actually handled this subject rather well in three episodes - one in Season 1, where Starbuck is told to torture a Cylon prisoner - he is human, but she keeps calling him a machine, nothing, and as long as she sees him as a machine - she doesn't worry about trying to drown him, refusing him food, or beating him. After all he can't feel can he? They revisit the scenario again in an episode called Pegasus, where the commander, Kain, encourages her men to rape and torture a pregnant female cylon. Kain has seen half her fleet exterminated. Over 500 people killed.
Torn to bits. She hates the Cylons to the point that they have become an obsession, they are demons to her - and she feels she is justified in torturing and killing them.
It seems that almost anyone could be a torturer, but I don't think everyone could be one--a few people I'm sure would choose to resist the combination of pressure and knowledge that there would be no reprisal.
I agree. In all of the studies - only 65% or at a least a third of the participants showed these tendencies. Not everyone did. That does not mean however the other participants may not show these tendencies if the situation was different. We are motivated by different things and I'm not sure we can know for certain what could cause us to do something horrible. That said, I do think we have the ability to choose and that by no means are our choices necessarily consistent or predictable. Just because the object of our worste nightmares appears before us -ready to be tortured does not mean we will do it - as evidenced in BattleStar Galatica (President Roslin and Adama do veer away from it and fight against it even though both have good cause not to), BTVS (Buffy resists the urge to torture Spike when he becomes harmless in Pangs, at least to a degree). But we can't know one way or the other until we are in the situation.