The incident at Abu Ghraib was a horrible ordeal which can be easily compared to the 1971 Zimbardo Prison Study. In comparing them, it is easy to conclude that any person has the capacity to commit such acts when put in certain societal roles.
Any ordinary person is capable of immoral acts against humanity if they are put in a role or position to do so. This does not mean that everyone will become a robot to this fact, but it does mean that everyone is susceptible to the roles placed on them by society. This point is proven by analyzing the Stanford Prison Study from 1971 and comparing it with the Abu Ghraib Incident of 2003. Both of these cases show ordinary people put into positions of power over vulnerable prisoners. And in both, most of the guards became violent and power-driven, regardless of how they we were before hand.
The actions taken at the Abu Ghraib prison are very well known and viewed with horror by our society, and rightfully so. It is unclear how any person could be capable of such acts against humanity. In this paper, I hope to discover the cause of the incident and shed light on a small aspect of human nature and society.
I began writing this paper with very little knowledge of the events taken at Abu Ghraib in 2003. I was hoping to justify what little I knew by saying that the soldiers involved in the torture of the Iraqis were acting out of pure revenge. It was logical for me to assume that since Americans have been tortured by the Iraqis, the soldiers wanted justice for their comrades. Having a strong military background in my family, and beginning my own future in the military, this was a natural assumption. This assumption is, however, out of the question for me now.
After viewing photos and doing research, my opinion has changed completely. There was an element in the acts that was almost too sadistic, even for revenge. One could possibly argue that there is a mental disorder plaguing these soldiers. However, that is highly unlikely to be affecting such a large group of different backgrounds. More likely is the fact that this is probably a social aspect of human nature. When a person is put into a role or given a task, they quickly fall into it and become what they think a person in that role would be like.
To explain this further, I will include links between the incident at Abu Ghraib and the famous Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo. Zimbardo himself compared his own experiment to that of the acts taken place in 2003 at Abu Ghraib.
Zimbardo's prison study sounded innocent enough in its proposal. A group of twenty-four voluntary male college students were separated into two different roles. The first was given the role of prisoner, and the other was to play out the role of security guards. The experiment was set in a mock prison where the prisoners stayed for twenty-four hours a day while the security guards stayed for a few hours after which were allowed to return home. This experiment was done in 1971 and was supposed to last 2 weeks. However, due to the instances which I will now divulge, it was ended after 6 days. (Zimbardo, 1999)
The participants in Zimbardo's study became so transfixed with their assigned roles, that their personalities changed almost immediately. Within only 36 hours of the experiment's start, the guards denied the prisoners the privilege (their right) to eat food or to use the restroom. Zimbardo stated that “ about a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation.” He continued on to say that “these guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behavior.” He included that the experiments were ended due to the fact that the guards' “boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners,” and also because of the now apparent involvement of the researches in the experiment. (Zimbardo 1999).
The participants in the study, especially the guards, were later remorseful of their actions and did not realize how they were acting at the time. The change in their disposition had gone unnoticed to themselves. (Zimbardo, 1999)
Abu Ghraib was a newly-claimed U.S. military prison just twenty miles west of Baghdad. In late 2003, the horrific torture of Iraqi prisoners occurred. The torture consisted of many indecent of sodomy, threats of rape, electric shock, pornographic pictures, being indecently exposed, homosexual poses, and more unmentionable acts by American Soldiers of the 372 nd Military Police Company. Photographs and videos were taken by the soldiers involved in the crime for their own entertainment. They posed with the detainees while they were being tortured in various ways. (Hersh, 2003)
In both instances, the prisoners were stripped naked and continuously harassed. They were not allowed to use the restroom and were deprived of their beds. Also, neither the guards of the experiment or the soldiers of the incident were given much training, if any, for the situations they were in. It is un-telling how much worse the situation could have been during the Stanford Prison Study if the rules of conduct hadn't been enforced (what little they were) and if the experiment had continued. Judging by the progressively aggressive nature of the guards, it could have ended up just as horrifically.
A military defense attorney in the case of abuse at Abu Ghraib tried to defend the actions of the soldiers by saying they were acting on orders. In support of this, he asked the question, “Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?”(2004). Clearly, from the data provided, the answer to this could easily be yes. While they may have been acting on orders, their expressions in the photos, and the fact that they themselves never reacted against the orders due to their own moral obligations, leaves room for Zimbardo's findings on the matter. (Hersh, 2004)
Abu Ghraib was a terrible incident that should never have happened. While I found it most disturbing to research the incident, it was rewarding for my own growth and knowledge. Perhaps knowing how easily a person can switch into a role will prevent myself and others from being so easily altered by a task. And in knowing as much, be able to maintain the moral integrity that is instilled within every individual to prevent occurrences like these from happening.
Even though the incident at Abu Ghraib in 2003 was disturbing on many levels, it would not be a far stretch to say that any person could be capable of acting in such ways. This fact should be most distressing to all. The power of a particular role in society can have many effects on a person causing them to become completely different than what they normally are. Zimbardo gives a true summary to both events by stating that, “ we realized how ordinary people could be readily transformed from the good Dr. Jekyll to the evil Mr. Hyde”(1999).
