In The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Szegedy-Maszak says that rationalizing the stark change in mentality of the young American soldiers who kept watch over the Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison would be a very challenging task. Some may blame inexperience or dereliction of duty by commanding officers. Others may say that stress caused by living in a war zone was responsible. However, it has become clear that no single reason would be sufficient to completely explain the events at Abu Ghraib prison.
Throughout this essay, Szegedy-Maszak attempts to answer the question: Are there particular conditions in Iraq that might shed light on why these soldiers committed these unconscionable acts? (Szegedy-Maszak p. 173).
She begins by presenting two famous psychological experiments that explore the capacity for evil residing in normal people, (Szegedy-Maszak p. 174).
The first experiment, conducted by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, attempted to mimic a real life prison scenario with students impersonating actual guards and prisoners. Surprisingly, the results were analogous to the actual events that took place at Abu Ghraib prison. The second experiment, created by Stanley Milgram, studied some peoples willingness to follow orders. The experiment began with an actor sitting in a chair supposedly wired with electricity. For every wrong answer this actor would give, volunteers were asked to deliver increasingly dangerous electric shocks to the actor in the chair. The results showed that two out of the three volunteers delivered potentially lethal electric shocks.
The Term Paper on "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources Of Sadism" By Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
... work there. In her article “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism”, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak looks at the Abu Ghraib atrocities and the possible reasons why ... English. Things at Abu Ghraib were very systematic and impersonal. As with Zimbardo’s experiment, the prisoners at Abu Ghraib had no identity. Abu Ghraib was not the ...
Judging by the outcomes of these two experiments, Szegedy-Maszak concludes that some evil may be present within human nature. To help tie the results of these experiments in with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Szegedy-Maszak references Robert Okin, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, who said that the abuse [in Abu Ghraib] became an inexcusable way of working off [the soldiers] rage, anxiety about their own safety, and their sense of helplessness. (Szegedy-Maszak p. 174) These feelings, along with the stress of living in a war zone, may have driven the soldiers to commit such heinous crimes.
Szegedy-Maszak determines that another possible reason for the soldiers actions was the lack of a place where the soldiers could fulfill their sexual desires. It is thought that intercourse can help relieve stress during a time of war. This kind of relaxation, had it been available at the time, could have helped prevent the prison scandal.
According to psychologist Herbert Kelman, the authorization, routinization, and dehumanization that took place in Abu Ghraib made it an ideal place for physical torture, (Szegedy-Maszak p. 174).
Authorization gave way to the start of torture, with the major officers telling their subordinates that their actions were not in violation of any rules. Then, there was routinization, which gave each soldier a part in the process of torture. The guards believed that the torture was simply a part of the interrogation process. Since many of these recruits were inexperienced in war, and because they had been placed in such a stressful location as Iraq, most did not question their superiors orders.
According to Boston psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, this kind of activity can strike an interest in a person and cause this person to alter his or her values by participating in activities he or she may have originally found uninteresting or even shameful. Finally, dehumanization served to separate the soldiers emotions from any of their own actions. Masks were placed over the heads of the Iraqi prisoners who were going to be tortured. Now without a face, these prisoners had been transformed from men into tools that could be tortured without inhibition and, in a way, used to relieve the anxieties placed upon the American soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib.
The Term Paper on A Long Way Gone Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is written by Ismael Beah. The author of the book was born in Sierra Leone in 1980, and then, eighteen years later, he moved to the United States. His biography doesn't remind the lives of ordinary writers, as, unlike them, his life wasn't very sweet. The book tells the story of his childhood, when in 1991 a civil ...
According to Szegedy-Maszak, Abu Ghraib became a haven for free thoughts, especially evil ones that led these young soldiers to commit such shameful crimes. These thoughts seemed to take advantage of a sliver of evil hidden deep within human nature. The resulting effect of the combination of evil thoughts and evil within human nature was unquestionably horrific. American soldiers were transformed into sadistic machines, following their orders without question, and causing suffering for the Iraqi prisoners without the slightest hint of regret or shame. Although the events at Abu Ghraib may still seem difficult to comprehend, people may continue to search for a plausible reason behind the entire prison scandal. However, even if they do eventually find such an answer, they will still be unable to change the past.
Works Cited
Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne. The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism. US News & World Report. 30 August 2008: 173-174.
