Abu Ghraib

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo made a huge impact on the field of Psychology. He changed the world of social psychology by taking it from a field focused on behavior being dispositional and transitioned it into a focus on social psychology in the terms of viewing behavior as situational. Gordon Allport, Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner all helped set the stage for personality psychology and social psychology. Each of these individuals touched on the idea of behavior being dispositional…

In the book Decision Points President George W. Bush admits, “in defiance of their orders and military law, American soldiers had severely mistreated detainees at an Iraqi prison called Abu Ghraib.” He continued, “I felt sick, really sick. This was not what our military or our country stood for. While the perpetrators were court-martialed, America’s reputation took a severe hit. I considered it a low point of my presidency” (pg. 88-89). On…

“James, go chop that wood outside.” “James, don’t put your elbows on the table.” “James, put that phone of yours away.” Obedience has been a common theme in many households spanning hundreds of generations. This topic is one of the main ideas in the movie, A Few Good Men. In the movie, two Marines stationed at Guantanamo Marine Base in Cuba, are accused of killing a fellow Marine William Santiago. Daniel Kaffee, Jo Galloway, and Sam Weinberg all try to convince the courts that these men did not…

Getting involved internationally only to be unethical can be worse for our image than not getting involved at all. An example of this is our involvement in the Iraq war and the Prisoner of War camps at Abu Ghraib. Although we were involved for the purpose of the “War on Terror”, this became a scandal in which US soldiers engaged in what President George W. Bush called an “alternative set of procedures” (CITATION). They were really ghastly incidents of torture…

In 2004, a group of 7 soldiers in Abu Ghraib videotaped themselves torturing civilians they were supposed to be guarding. People around the globe were wondering how there was all that evil in these seven men and women. The military leaders answered them by saying they were, “rogue soldiers”…

In “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson discusses “desensitization”, the lack of response to a stimulus due to a surplus of exposure to it (Nelson, 306). In particular, Nelson discusses desensitization in terms of “image flow” (Nelson, 304). In Azar Nafisi’s “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran”, Nafisi reviews cases where the desensitization negatively affected society, but was able to be stopped. Moreover, in “Selections from Alone Together”, Sherry Turkle discusses some of the benefits of…

Until recently joining the military was a way to go to school, have a career. There was always an “idea of fighting in a war” but until 911 and Al Qaeda War was something that our fathers and Grandfathers knew. The abuse reported at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq brought a new conversation concerning the Geneva Convention. In my personal opinion from reading through the documents on the reports. There was clearly a lack of leadership and training for the soldiers that were in charge of…

definition of evil. To Zimbardo, evil is the exercise of power, to harm people psychologically, to physically harm, to destroy people mortally or ideas, or to commit crimes against humanity. To support this he brought up the incidents he witnessed at Abu Ghraib and showed the pictures that were taken by the soldiers. The government referred to the soldiers who mistreated the prisoners as “bad apples”, but Zimbardo says that isn 't the question that should be asked because it isn 't the soldiers…

horrors of war tolerable”. The clout of the rhetoric of “good vs. evil” can be accounted for the tolerance level left to certain practises of the war on terror. As main examples of those, can be mentioned the use of torture in prisons such as that of Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Violations of human rights had been practised, including rape, sexual abuse, torture, sodomy and murder. The scandal came to public attention in 2003 through reports published by Amnesty International. Taking the specific case of…

Most experts consider the US invasion of Iraq as the US’s most serious strategic mistake in the modern history and perhaps ever. There are many reasons of the US invade Iraq. Frist, Iraq’s abysmal Human Rights record under Saddam Hussein’s regime such as Chemical attack many times, invasion of Kuwait, Bloody suppression of Kurdish and Shi'a, Amnesty International report, Refugees International, and restrictions on religious practice. Second, FBI said Iraqi government was involved in a plot to…