(no subject)

[noahgibbs]

*sigh*

I grew up in a prison town. Some of the people I grew up with, and some that I knew very well, are now prison guards. About a third of the town works for the Texas Department of Corrections. So, stastically, of course I know a bunch of people who work at the prison. Everybody who grew up there does.

That means I also knew a lot of adults who had worked at the prison. Or families that did. I knew what the town was like. And long after leaving I even realized that not every town was like that. Talking to prison guards out here in California, prison guards who don't live among their own, showed me that. That let me see the differences, and see them just as clearly as can be. Stand a prison guard next to a plumber and it's not long before you know which is which.

So if you say to me, "take a bunch of good, solid American citizens, and set them to watching people who have been accused of horrendous crimes. Then ask them to do awful things to them to make them confess. Will they do it?"... I'd say, "yeah. They'll do it." And if you ask me, "even if you just accuse the people, and you don't prove they'd done anything?", I'd say, "what does that have to do with anything? It's not like the people torturing them know. I'm not even sure that they care, though I hope they do."

So if you were to ask me about the current scandal in the Iraqi prisons, I'd say, "what? This surprises you?"

The people defending them, the people who say, "but look at what other awful stuff <other person with olive skin> has done"... They're really making the same mistake as the people in the prisons who do awful things to the prisoners. They're forgetting that there are innocent people as well as guilty people there. That we accused those people, but we've proven nothing, and some of those accusations are wrong.

But it's hard to prove that. Because some of those accusations are right. Some of those prisoners, in one way or another, deserve that awful treatment. So the question is, how many innocent people do you torture and kill because they're standing near guilty people?

Traditionally, in this country, our judges like to say "none". Or "no more than we have to". But traditionally the citizens say something else. We may not have invented the lynch mob in this country, but we're certainly long-time fans of it. We've always had enough space that we can run people out of town on a rail, or make it clear they're not wanted, and if they stay around and get lynched, well... They didn't take the hint, so obviously they had it coming. If they were innocent, they'd have run off and started again somewhere else. For that matter, if they were guilty they'd have done the same thing.

We forget that there's not room to run away in some places. Not even if we make it clear the people we hate aren't wanted.

A small community might be one of those places. More crowded nations might be.

But a prison cell certainly is.

Comments

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that. May I pass it on?

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Please do.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Having been in the military, the only thing I would add is that crimes of this nature, and I've read the report, these are crimes both by the Geneva convention and civil law in the US as well as the UCMJ, can never be accepted. If you allow things like this to happen, you create an environment that both encourages it, and will perpetuate it.

Just because they did it too, doesn't mean it's okay when we do the same.

Just because they were under orders doesn't make it okay. We, hopefully, train our children to know basic right from wrong. Raping someone with a broomstick is wrong. Period. Additionally, we train our troops to recognize an illegal order and they are taught that they can and should disobey illegal orders.

The soldiers involved, should be tried in a military court, and if found guilty, should be punished quickly and harshly. A court martial is insufficent.

[sooperspryte.livejournal.com]

Just because they were under orders doesn't make it okay. We, hopefully, train our children to know basic right from wrong. Raping someone with a broomstick is wrong. Period. Additionally, we train our troops to recognize an illegal order and they are taught that they can and should disobey illegal orders.

Okay, you've been in the military so you've got tons more experience on this than I do, and now I'm curious. Is there really nothing to the "following orders" claim? I'm not trying to excuse anybody, I'm trying to understand. To make a blatantly inadequate comparison, I have worked at jobs where I was asked to do something that I wasn't morally thrilled about doing, things like glossing over information to a customer, or not being specific about software bugs or whatever (as far as I know, none of these has been in any way harmful or life threatening to anyone or anything even close). Generally if I'm asked to do something that seems wrong to me I bring it up as a point, but occasionally I have felt enormous pressure to do this thing, either directly or implied. Since I generally don't have the luxury of quitting a job at will with no other one lined up, I have sometimes complied to these requests. As a rule, if a job required this of me often, I'd get out as soon as possible, but usually not before doing the thing I thought was "wrong" at least once.

My thinking here is that if I can feel that kind of pressure in a relatively safe, non life-threatening environment, couldn't the pressure be much much stronger in a place where the stakes are so much higher? Of course it's not a good comparison, and I sure hope it's harder to convince someone that it's okay to rape someone with a broomstick than to ignore a software bug, but does the "following orders" argument have no merit? Doesn't the military train people to follow orders of superiors, under the assumption that the superior has more high-level information and therefore a better perspective on what needs to happen? If a soldier doesn't follow orders, what are the consequences? Even if there's an investigation and later the order is determined to be illegal? Is the soldier still able to serve? Are they risking disgrace and the livelihood of their family?

I think that what's happened in Iraq is horrendous, though knowing what I do about the Stanford experiment I agree with angelbob about it being inevitable in that situation. That doesn't excuse it, but it may explain it a bit.

I'm also curious if you think it is more of a problem with the individual soldiers or with their commanding officers and chain of command.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

No doubt, there is a significant pressure in that you are expected to and are trained to follow orders. That's why we also train both officers and enlisted to recognize an illegal order. In those situations, there may be immediate repercussions, in that your direct superior (the one who gave illegal orders) may punish you. However, you do have some power and recourse in these situations.

Ultimately, it comes down to 'I was following orders' is not an excuse. It means that someone else is guilty as well, but it does not make you any less guilty or responsible. We set that bar at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, and it has stayed there, and should remain there in my opinion.

[daltong.livejournal.com]

The people defending them, the people who say, "but look at what other awful stuff < other person with olive skin > has done"... They're really making the same mistake as the people in the prisons who do awful things to the prisoners. They're forgetting that there are innocent people as well as guilty people there. That we accused those people, but we've proven nothing, and some of those accusations are wrong.

And I believe that even if someone is guilty, it's not okay to do something awful to someone who did something awful purely because it feels good. I do know the overwhelming urge to do just that, but, even though I'm no longer a pacifist, I still believe "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

There has been a presumption that many of these prisoners were being abused in order to get information out of them. But there was an interview in the NY Times with an Iraqi who says he was one of those shown in the pictures (and apparently he has scars on his stomach that match the photoe) and he indicated that it was actually punishment for a food fight, of all things, that took place among prisoners!

For that matter, the officials in Iraqi had admitted that many of those who were held for weeks/months were guilty of NOTHING, they were simply picked up on suspicions.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

There has been a presumption that many of these prisoners were being abused in order to get information out of them.

I'm sure some of them were. But no, it just becomes a matter of doing awful things to them to keep them in line. To keep order, as it were.

I was very impressed with 'The Green Mile', but it was hard for me to identify with. Tom Hanks' character was unlikely to be able to maintain even that degree of compassion in that position. It just doesn't seem to work that way. None of the guards portrayed seemed to be as on-edge or as (reasonably) paranoid as the actual article.

To a degree

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

First, I would like to thank you for that insightful commentary. As a historian, I understand from an intellectual viewpoint how this happened. As a human being, I'm having a bit of an emotional disconnect.

This is neither the first nor the last time this sort of behavior occurred in an occupied nation. That doesn't excuse it, it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make things easier for either the prisoners or the sheep who allowed these things to happen.

Digging down into the dregs of my memory, I seem to recall a psychological experiment done at Standford in the 60s or 70s. The researcher involved randomly assigned half of the students to be "prisoners" and half to be "guards". Six days into the experiment (I think) the professor halted the project. The guards had started beating the prisoners, and the professor decided that the project was too dangerous.

As an optimist, I generally see the good in folks. While I know I will rebound and feel good about humanity again, at the moment my belief in human nature stands in crisis.

Says the student in Social Psyche...

[miss-mimsy.livejournal.com]

Your point has even been demonstrated with a very controversial experiment done over at Stanford.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

Zimbardo demonstrated that people act according to their roles, even when they know it is fabricated. It is devastating reading and the video is very disturbing.

Re: Says the student in Social Psyche...

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

Great minds think alike. Thanks for the corroborating data.

Re: Says the student in Social Psyche...

[coyotegrrrl.livejournal.com]

There was also a study in authority that's pretty famous. I forget the when and where, but it always comes up in social science classes.

A professor brought people in and put them behind glass. They were to ask another person on the other side of the glass questions and to give them a small shock when answered incorrectly. Each time, the shock was upped. Most of the people continued shocking the subjects well into the visible pain and possibly permanent damage territory at the urging of the professor/authority figure. Apparently, "just following orders" is a pretty powerful influence...(the shockees were all actors, btw).

Re: Says the student in Social Psyche...

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Milgram experiment, if I'm remembering the name right. Different but yeah, related.

[terpsichoros.livejournal.com]

There seem to be about four main groups of people involved in this: there are regular army MPs, reservist MPs, intelligence people, and some civilian contractors who are/were prison guards in civilan life (possibly some of the reserve MPs are too?).

Different groups of people have different cultures. The military (regular active-duty) has a culture which demands good treatment for prisoners, and expects the same from others. The intelligence services have a culture of "anything goes" as long as the objective is accomplished. There are some pretty strict constraints on the intelligence services, but the culture appears to be "don't get caught". Prison guards (at least some) appear to have the attitude that their prisoners are subhuman, and that random brutality directed at prisoners is ok, as long as one can verbalize some sort of justification in a setting where your word is worth many times that of the prisoner.

From what I've seen so far, it appears that the people who were effectively in charge were either intelligence types or career prison guards, not regular MPs. While that doesn't excuse what happened, it does go some way towards explaining it, which is useful when trying to prevent future recurrences.