Preview

The Critique of "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism"

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
319 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Critique of "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism"
The Critique of "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism"
In the article "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism," Marianne Szegedy- Maszak discusses the horrifying acts of our American soldiers against the Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison. The American guards photographed themselves torturing and humiliating the prisoners. Marianna presents the idea that maybe these few guards aren't just ‘a few bad seeds' but in fact any average person would commit similar acts given the situation.
Marianne Szegedy- Maszak purpose in this article is to persuade us to believe that everyone has an evil side, and is capable of committing unthinkable crimes. Marianna supports her theory by referencing psychological experiments. She discusses a study performed at Yale, were a group of students are assigned to be guards or prisoners. After a few days the ‘guards' actions became fairly similar to those of the American soldiers. They also began to torment and humiliate the prisoners. She also talks about a previous experiment about a group of students that were instructed to shock an actor sitting in a chair that they think is wired to electricity. *** I can't think of a better way of talking about this experiment*** Both of these experiments support her proposal that everyman can and will commit torturous acts.
Marianne Szegedy- Maszak lacked enough evidence in this article to persuade people to believe that the average person is evil. She had valid points; however, she didn't use a variety of supportive material. Marianne didn't use any facts to back up her peculation besides psychological experiments performed in the early 1970s. All of the facts in this article are bias favoring her theory that everyman is evil and not presenting any thoughts that these soldiers aren't just your everyday people. There are a lot of emotional loaded words used in this article such as: torture, horrific, and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    John Darley’s criticism focuses on how the findings of the obedience experiments are applied to historical or real-world situations. He points out many ways in which the behavior of the obedience subjects in Milgram’s study differs drastically from the behavior of many others who commit atrocities: Nazi doctors or concentration camp executioners, for instance (Darley 133-134). However, since Darley’s criticism focuses on the behavioral differences between the obedience study and historical events, Milgram responds in a strong, convincing way. Referring to the process of comparing laboratory studies with real-world situations, Milgram writes, “The problem of generalizing from one to the other does not consist of point-for-point comparison between one and the other... but depends on whether one has reached a correct theoretical understanding of…

    • 1351 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most people would agree with doing something horrific to another person, since it is easier to conform, than to fight, people tend to protect themselves before protecting a stranger. Stanley Milgram put a study together to prove that Germans are more likely to be obedient to authority then American are. The study was called “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably.” Milgram explains the character aspects of why people listen to authority and why they afraid not to. Social structure and the organization of society have a powerful affect on people. Milgrams set out to New Haven to start the study ad later on planed to go to Germany to do the study on the society there.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Getting your teeth pulled and fingers snapped for not letting the enemy know where the rest of your brigade is hiding, is a common torture tactic. In most cases you just want the pain to stop, so you give false information. This is why I feel ,no, torture should not be a tactic to retrieve information and should be abolished in this country. In the essay The Torture Myth written by Anne Applebaum, torture is discussed and evaluated by the writer. Applebaum focuses on whether torture is a good vice to gain information from a person and it is insinuated that she does not, based on her arguments in the essay. I too believe torture is not a humane nor moral way to obtain truthful information.…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At Abu Ghraib prison, many people’s lives were changed. Some soldiers were sentenced to prison, some officers were demoted, and the prisoners lost their dignity. When people and soldiers are placed in difficult and stressful situations they will make grave mistakes, but that does not excuse their…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This study is considered a classic when with regards to prison psychology. According to the American Psychological Association (2004) “Its messages have been carried in many textbooks in the social sciences, in classroom lectures across many nations, and in popular media renditions. Its web site has gotten over 15 million unique page views in the past four years, and more than a million a week in the weeks following the expose of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American Military Police army reservists in Abu Ghraib Prison”. Zimbardo’s research has come to be known as one of the classical example of how circumstantial power has the ability to influence individuals in multiple domains. This experiment is historically one of the prime examples of how even the most “good” person when placed under specific situations can in turn transform into “evil”. It shows just how easily individuality can be stripped away and in turn how the environment can define and dictate ones…

    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    When times that require the use of torture come to light, the media tends to give life to an already harsh experience. If a soldier needs to find out where his fellow soldiers were taken, there are ways to get this information out of the detainee. To some, the quickest way to do so is to bring the harshest aspects the…

    • 886 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Guantanamo Bay is a US prison for terrorists and other threatening people, located off of US soil. This means that the processes that go on in the institution, legally, do not need to follow US rules. Many painful and tortuous things are performed on the prisoners, such as force feeding and the topic of this essay, water boarding, where the victim is made to feel as though they are drowning. Although Gitmo is legal/allowed to an extent, it still begs the question how the guards consciously perform such cruel acts and what I would do if I were faced with the decision of torturing a prisoner or not.…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Zimbardo Research Paper

    • 1014 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The relevance of the Stanford Prison Experiment in relation to contemporary world issues can show how there are situations that can force an individual to adapt. Herbert offered an example that involved the case of military personal and their mistreatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. During the trial of one of the accused, Staff SGT. Ivan Frederick, Zimbardo stood as an expert witness in defense of Frederick. According to Herbert (2007) Zimbardo…

    • 1014 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Abu Ghraib prison was a prison in Iraq that was notorious for torturing the prisoners. Some of the violations include murder, sodomy, sexual abuse, and rape. Photographs of each torture mechanism were taken and shown to the government. Many of the American soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal were accused of abuse. The administration of George W. Bush tried to cover up the abuse cases as “isolated incidents”, therefore making it seem as if the torture was only happening to select inmates, and as a form of intense interrogation. It was later revealed that the torture was not conducted on a select few, but conducted throughout groups of the inmates. Some of the abusers in the prison believed that they were doing a good thing.…

    • 147 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Stanley Milgram’s (1963) Obedience study is widely known in the field of psychology. This study is particularly distinct because the findings of the study were surprising to public and ethical procedure of the study was controversial. Stanley Milgram (1963) conducted this particular experimented to examine the how far individuals obey an authority. His goal was to find an explanation of Natzi killings in World War II. He recruited male participants through newspaper advertising. The participants were “randomly selected” to be the teacher, while the confederate was assigned to the role of the learner. The learner was in a room strapped to a chair that delivered shocks. The participant was directed to press a button and deliver a shock to the…

    • 1140 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The electroshock experiment showed that two thirds of people who were tested conformed and obeyed the experimenter blindly, suggesting an idea that they are not the ones to blame for the ‘death’ of other participants of the experiment. The evil is the readiness to follow the commands and fully comply. There are really quite few monsters in the world; the problem is in the whole majority of people who are ready to follow them and to conform to any orders without considering the consequents or the actions themselves. People face uncritical conformity to the leader’s or group norms. Their personality and moral principals are simply switched off and the aggressiveness starts growing. However Zimbardo claims that evil is not only concluded in an action, but also in passive tolerance of what is going on. A new situation may breed both – rage and inaction – and both promote evil. Although on the other hand a new situation may provoke heroic imagination. For example during holocaust many non-Jewish families under the threat of death were hiding Jewish kids in their homes. After the holocaust they were granted the title of the righteous among the nations though the righteous considered that what they did, everyone would do in the same situation. That is something that must be conveyed to our children. In every situation we can choose 3 ways: either give the green light to the hostile imagination and evil, stay aside or become heroes. Every one must be taught that humanity is our…

    • 1728 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When obeying authority one can often loose thought of morals and beliefs. In the experiments the men obey the authority figure by doing cruel things they would not usually do. These experiments turn mentally stable men into a person willing to inflict harsh punishments on innocent people while following orders. Night by Elie Wiesel, The Milgram Shock Experiment, and the stanford prison experiment shows how obedience to an authority can cause people to stray from their conscience.…

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Case for torture

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In the article entitled “The Case for Torture” published by Newsweek in 1982, Michael Levin argues that the use of torture as a means to save lives is justifiable and necessary. Beginning with very general premises, Levin draws a series of hyperbolic cases where torture might be justifiable so as to set precedents for the justification of torture in more “realistic cases.” However, the author never fully defines the boundaries and conditions behind his premises and suggests that disregarding civil liberties as deemed necessary may be justified to preserve those same civil liberties. Throughout the article Levin resorts to a number of arguments with visible logical flaws, and by the end he fails to address any inquiries that may be raised against his arguments, instead drawing his arguments and conclusions into fear-inducing fire-and-brimstone rhetoric.…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    According to Strauss (2003), the behavior at Abu Gharib had jeopardized the war against terrorism. It was the Bush’s Administration’s approach to fighting terrorism that led to using torture and terror against the terrorists. Bush’s Administration used torture and abuse to justify the terrorist’s acts. The torture at Abu Ghraib, morally, makes it harder to condemn terrorism but at the same time helps fuels the terrorist’s logic in fighting the United States’ use of torture (Strauss, 2003). The resolution to conflict came in many forms, in which peacemaking became essential in ending the nightmares of Abu Ghraib.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    What are the causes of atrocity events such as the massacre at My Lai, the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib or the extermination of Jews during World War II? Whether groups of people bestowed with unaccountable power naturally resort to violence or not, the subject is indeed controversial. Arguably, the less restrictions that one must follow, the higher the risk becomes of one to condone violence. However, how can we explain war crimes and acts of torture? Is the most decisive factor leadership, group behavior, or culture? Psychologists Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam assess this exact debate in the article “Why Not Everyone Is A Torturer”, and thus attempt to understand the background of war crimes and torture. In addition to this discussion, Philip G. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment depicts similar outcomes, which were subsequently endorsed by the two psychologists. Nearly everyone has the capacity to commit acts of evil, given the right conditions, but what keeps a minority of people in check even under extremely stressful circumstances is their learned sense of morality and ability to distinguish right from wrong.…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays