By Imprisoned

The pictures of tortured naked Iraqi prisoners, forced to form a human pyramid , stream through my mind as I write this. A smiling American solder stands over the body of a dead Iraqi showing us all her enthusiasm over this man’s fate; the photos of the victims of America’s war in Iraq have crossed the T.V. screens and passed through the eyes of the entire world by now. How could an Army that states its purpose as the liberation of Iraq steal the dignity and freedom of so many?

The answer to this question lies in the work of the famous psychologist Stanley Milgram. According to the essay by Philip Meyer titled If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably, Milgram , when starting his career as a Social Psychologist , wanted to prove the atrocities committed by the NAZIS were caused by a difference between the German people and the rest of the world. Milgram set out to do this by running a series of what are now well known experiments to prove once and for all that the Germans were different.

The idea was to use a number of subjects whom believed they were taking part in a study into a behaviorist theory of learning. They were told to pull a piece of paper form a hat that said either teacher or learner. What the subjects did not know was both pieces of paper said teacher on them and the whole learning experiment was a farce. The subjects were paired with a research assistant playing the role of the person whom pulled the learner card from the hat. They were seated in a room at the Yale Interaction laboratory; the “learner “ was strapped into a chair, covered with electrodes, and the door to the learner’s room was closed. The “teacher “ was seated in another room and the experiment was ready to start.

The experiment consisted of the “teacher “ reading off a series of word pairs the “learner” was supposed to memorize. If the “learner “ failed to memorize the word pairs, the “teacher” was told to electrocute the “learner.” Of course the electrocutions were fake but the subject believed them to be real. The “learner” would intentionally get the word pairs wrong ,and the real experiment was to find out how much electricity the subject would pump into the “learner “, given the authority of the scientist whom was standing next to the subject encouraging him or her to fry the “learner “ in the name of science. Milgram found the vast majority of his subjects in the US would continue the experiment when ordered to by the scientist even when they believed the learner was in pain or near death. Milgram intended to repeat the experiment in Germany but due to his findings on the first experiment there was no need to for a second German experiment. The Germans would have been no different from the Americans.

Milgram’s explanation for the results of his study, according to Philips, was the atrocities committed by the NAZIS in World War II were caused by a mechanism within all people that encourages individuals to follow orders by placing the blame of their actions onto the authority whom gave them the orders to commit their actions. This mechanism is not unique to German people, as Milgram discovered by undertaking his study in the US and by placing the authority with the scientists.

The American people should not forget the lesson of the Milgram experiment, because in doing so they will allow more instances of torture to be committed in their name. The soldiers at Abu-Grade claimed they were only following orders, even though the government says they were acting alone. If the soldiers at Abu-Grade were ordered to extract information from the Iraqi prisoners through torture, then they were being set up to repeat the mistakes of the subjects in the Milgram experiment. At the very least the soldiers felt they could get off the hook by placing the blame for their actions onto their higher ups.

The NAZI guards at places like Auschwitz’s also claimed they were following orders. They were told to exterminate millions of ethnic minorities and physically disabled individuals, all in the name of a higher power. On the whim of a madman the German people systematically murdered six million Jews, in most part because they could not control their innate need to conform to the social norms put in to place by the NAZI party.

Even some Jews themselves allowed their own executions in the now infamous gas chambers. They followed the orders of the NAZIS; they formed lines to the chambers even when they knew the people who had gone before them were never to be seen again.* Some prisoners when ordered would even remove the bodies of their fallen comrades from the gas chambers and carry them to the massive incinerators that would destroy much of the evidence of the war crimes committed by the NAZI regime.

Milgram’s study shows horrible acts of barbarism like those committed by the NAZIS could happen anywhere. Abu-Grade just further drives this point home for those whom do not believe it could happen to them; in all of us there is a need to follow orders no matter how horrible, sick or cruel those orders may be. Abu-Grade has shown the world it could and has happened again; in all of us there is the ability to commit crimes against humanity.

If the American people do not realize they are not invulnerable to the authoritarian powers of those whom they follow as leaders more instances of torture will occur. For now these acts of torture have only been proven to have occurred in foreign lands, but if the American people do not wake up to the reality of what has happened in Iraq and to what happened to the millions of victims of Hitler’s programs of ethnic cleansing they will not be able to prevent it from happening again; maybe this time in their own back yards

Finally, for those readers out there in the activist community, take this knowledge of what has happened and educate your friends, neighbors, and acquaintances of what they are capable of doing. The guy next to you in line at the super market or the woman behind the check out counter could someday be the executioner of millions given the right conditioning from those whom they believe to have authority over them. It is our duty as Americans and as citizens of the world to prevent such atrocities from happening again. Don’t forget the lessons of the Milgram experiment, and most of all, don’t forget your humanity!