Greg Black
gjb at gbch dot net
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Fri, 21 May 2004
The guards at Abu Ghraib should not take all the blame
I’ve been displeased, although not surprised, by the eagerness of the US authorities to put all the blame for the disgraceful behaviour at the Abu Ghraib prison solely on the shoulders of the guards. As the famous Stanford Prison Experiment showed in 1971, the behaviour of the guards was exactly what you’d have expected. The real crime, in the light of over three decades of knowledge, was carried out by the people in charge—they did nothing to oversee their troops and so the outcome was entirely predictable.
Philip G. Zimbardo, who ran the Stanford experiment, has written a very brief analysis, Power turns good soldiers into ‘bad apples’. I suggest that it’s obligatory reading.
| Posted at: 18:16 | Path: /society | permalink |