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Hi Adrian,

Greetz from Cape Town.

Did it ever occur to you that these soldiers might have been encouraged (even ordered?) to commit these acts ? This would not render what they did any less vile, but it could go some way to explain why they posed for the photos.

I for one just don’t believe that any soldier, who obviously must be aware of the sensitivity of such matters in world opinion, would be so stoopid. Or would they ?

Ooh, saying American soldiers are worse than suicide bombers? Are you sure you don’t want to take your contact details off the site for a while?!?

Ahem. Anyway, I believe that human beings, particularly if put into a consequence-free environment, are capable of incredible cruelty. The expression on Pvt. Lyndie England’s face is one of pure glee. She was not ‘told’ to grin like an evil she-bitch from hell. Was she told to break the spirit of the prisoners, and that people would look the other way? I believe so.

The photos were probably taken to torture the Iraqis (as they would view thier own nakedness with shame), or, and this is slightly wierd, to send home. In a de-moralized environment such as the prison, they probably would have had to adjust thier morals to deal with the circumstances. I believe there have been numerous experiments in which one group of people was given power over another group, and they almost consistently abused it.

I think, as bad as the torture was and as much damage it will cause….I can’t compare it to the gross intent to kill on 9/11.

d

Soldiers are people. Predominantly they are young people who do an awful job so that the majority of the population haven’t had to fight in the last half century.

People don’t like killing and hurting other people. Its been found that most of the killing in infantry combat is done by a few people with psycopathic tendencies and most WWII troops deliberately shot to miss.

This is bad for an army if it is to function at full tilt and so the process of dehumanisation begins. Stick a bag on someone’s head and they are not a person - you don’t have to look them in the eye as you beat them to death.

The taking of photo’s is not new, confined to americans or unknow to the higher ranks. In Northern Ireland, the troops used to keep Gorey Books with photos of pretty much the same sort of thing.

It is what soldiers do to mentally survive, and it is as much the moral responsibility of all of us to realise this is what we ask of people when we ask them to die for us.

This is why the idea of troops keeping the piece is prepackaged semantic sugar. If we admitted that we will be sending desensitised young men whose job is to kill people to subjugate a population, then we’d find ourselves with a less comfortable truth.

9/11 vs one man in a cell? “One life or a million, it’s all the same”

I think that these guys are simply white trash…..the detritus of a capitalist society. No education, no positive social pressures, no morals, limited unfulfilling work, no future. There’s lots of them around, but they are normally confined to taking out their impotency on wives / girlfriends, kids and pets. In Iraq, they have the opportunity to feel powerful and in control. Plus, as one of your bloggers has indicated, they are also insensitised to some degree, which makes it even easier.

Whether that makes them worse, I don’t know. Both the suicide bombers and uneducated white trash are both the victims of their societies at large to some extent??

There has been a recent spate here in the states of people (usually college age or younger) doing really rather rotten things and video taping them. Some of these tapes have made it to the press. There was a girl and her friend who were ‘kidnapped and buried alive’, there were tire slahsings and paint bombings and various other things that I can’t recall. Is it the MTV/all media saturation society we live in? Is it reality TV to the extreme? Is it the Jackass mentality? Is it gang mentality? Who knows why people do these things. I just can’t describe how sad I am that this is what history will have a record of going forward for how we lived our lives in this period. Sad isn’t it?

I think you make a leap too far when you conclude that the only reason for taking photographs is that they knew they were doing something wrong.

‘Trophies’, be they photos, or the head of a tiger on the wall, are often obtained of things that one is proud of having done. The soldiers may have been following orders, they may have been explicitly disobeying them, but if their beliefs are that Iraqi prisoner=terrorist=demon=evil, therefore their mistreatment is a good thing, (to borrow your equation) and that would make the soldiers no different to your suicide bombers…

I think they were proud of what they were doing. Their beliefs were reinforced by the semantics of Good vs Evil which has been used throughout. Coupled with being placed in an environment where moral boundaries were blured and their power increased they used and abused their powers. Psychological experiments have showed in the past that where the balance of powers is left unchecked jailers turn to torturers. This was all the more inevitable that most were little trained and had no experience and had little knowledge of their victims culture apart from the best way to make them vulnerable.

Destructor made some very good points. The American soldiers were there to break the Iraqi prisoners’ spirits. The Iraqi prisoners are not afraid to die nor are they afraid to kill. You think that these prisoners would give out their info by POLITELY questioning them?

Yes, the Americans did some hideous things, but they were reprimanded. Not saying that the abuse was right, but if these happened the other way around, would the Iraqi gov’t reprimand their soldiers?

People outside of the U.S. (or Non-Americans for that matter)might laugh at us or condemn us, but don’t forget one very important thing: they killed our people first.

if these happened the other way around, would the Iraqi gov’t reprimand their soldiers?

Heh, has anyone seen the Onion article where Rumsfeld says they have to fight terror with terror?

America can’t hold itself to the standard of the worst in the world and say: “We are better than that, so all is forgiven.” It has to BE the standard of the best in the world.

d

I’m trying to remember the name of it (I mentioned ages ago) but there was a study done in the early 70s (I think) where ‘average’ guys we used to set up a prison environment to see how they reacted.

Upshot was that they had to call off the experiment after a few days as the barbarity had gotten too extreme. I’ll dig out a link and post it..

Here ya go: http://www.prisonexp.org/

To me, the fact that they took those pictures suggests that their behaviour was considered “acceptable” by their peers and their superiors. Most people who do something they know to be wrong are covert about it, they don’t usually pose for photos. It matters not a jot if they were following orders, the Allies (including the US) established at the Nuremburg (?sp) trials that “following orders” was not a legitimate defence. The Iraqis took very few prisoners but there were howls of outrage from the US when those few were paraded on Iraqi TV, the US was keen enough on the Geneva Convention then. The Americans seem to be the master of the double standard these days.

Das Experiment

Buy it, rent it, borrow it. Whatever.

Just watch it.

The infamous and deeply unethical Milgram experiments are also quite interesting from the point of view of the effects of authority and command chains: Behavioural Study of Obedience The Perils of Obedience.

Particularly ironic is that the US actually dropped thousands on leaflets on Iraqi military installations before they invaded last year. Among the messages was the threat that soldiers would be held accountable for any crimes they committed- and saying that they were just following orders would not be a defense.

A bizarre paradox when the number one fact they drill into you in the military is that you should always obey orders without question.

d

Myra, you say that “The American soldiers were there to break the Iraqi prisoners’ spirits. The Iraqi prisoners are not afraid to die nor are they afraid to kill. You think that these prisoners would give out their info by POLITELY questioning them?”

Among the thousands held at Abu Ghraib are many non political prisoners, arrested simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have never killed, are afraid to die and have no information to pass on to US military “intelligence”.

I’d go further and say that looking at the faults and injustices in the US penal system, is it any wonder this happened?

They are the enemy.

These prisoners are (on the whole) responsible for killing their comrades. The army is like a family for many who serve. Soldiers are war-y people whom are in the business of killing people, they are tough people.

I don’t condone what they did, but these prisoners of war are the British soldier’s demons. The psychology behind it is no different, just more shocking as you assume “our side� would never do such a thing, but our soldiers are just as human and emotional as those who bombed the twin towers.

It is the same.

As an additional note to Andy, even the US Armed Forces have acknowledged that 80-90% of the prisoners at Abu Gharib had done nothing wrong.

“Yes but how will we know they haven’t done anything wrong unless we torture them to confess it?”

This sort of circular, pre-emptive logic is precisely what led to the invasion in the first place- little wonder the soldiers saw no problem with it, when it was being practised at the highest levels of power.

d

Americans in Iraq behave now as germans did in Russia in 1941. Arrogant, remorseless, ignorant and despitefull of the value of human life.

The war was an investment for the USA in terms of exchanging some ammo stockpile into the crude oil. Fantastic opportunity to stuff your pockets with a bit of extra cash if you ask me.

If now the links between iraq, afghanistan and al qaida were established and proven, it would bemuch easier to leave those countries alone, and pick out suspected individuals. As of this moment, all terrorists just spread out around the world. Good luck finding most of them.

Also, please do not forget that USA and UK sponsored Taliban movement during our (russian) presense in Afghanistan. The so called liberation of Afghanistan was just another farce in order for the USA to establish Military bases there and take over gas and oil pipelines.

This is so pathetic that it’s not even funny.

i think that your belief and opinions the suicide bombers and the american soldiers is very right. however i don’t think that killing demons gives you a free ride into heaven.