Pia Roelen C.

Pahati
BSP 3D

February 26, 2014

SocPsy 323: Abu Ghraib (Aggression)

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse is definitely a sign of aggression, isnt? Terrible
aggression, I must say. The military police personnel of the United States Army and the Central
Intelligence Army tortured, raped, sexually abused the prisoners and even engage them into
sodomy. They made fun of them and do anything they please to debase the prisoners. Ive seen
photos making Iraqi prisoners dehumanized, videos of such abuse and so much torture that I
never thought humans are capable of doing. Yes it is evil, but we can not just blame the act of
aggression to the personalities of the military personnel who did that kind of torture towards the
Iraqis, we have to clearly study all the sides why they had done that and what were the factors
that contributed for them to resort to such torment.
We may all be good persons here, and seeing that kind of torture and abuse way back
2004, we may have said to ourselves, I will never do that to Iraqis. Theyre still humans, they
dont deserve that kind of torture. But what we didnt know, we can be evil like Hitler or the jail
guards in Abu Ghraib as well as we can be pious like a saint, like Mother Theresa, for as what
researchers and social psychologists have said, making a normal or good person do something
evil and making an evil person do something good only demands a right dose of certain social
situations that can surely transform them into persons they never thought they can be, and one
evidence for that argument is Dr. Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiment which only lasted for
six days because of the participants who are playing as jail guards abused their fellow
participants playing as prisoners even they knew that they are just playing for a role, and no one
is a real prisoner and a real jail guard.
Facing something like that and being in that situation wherein you are in command in the
whole prison jail, gives a person a great sense of authority in which they think they are in
commandthat they are the good apples while perceiving that the Iraqi prisoners are the bad
ones, and that they deserve to be tortured so that they change their ways and will learn their
lessons. Aside from the social situation that the American military personnel were in, I also
consider why it turned out that way, is the lack of supervision. No one supervises them in Iraq,

they are at their own and even the government of America is unaware of the torture there that
violated the human rights of the Iraqis. It is just because of the Taguba Report thats why they
had known. Another is maybe because of boredom, pressure, fear, anxiety and the temperature in
Iraq contributed why the military personnel in Abu Ghraib had acted that way. We can judge
persons easily, we can judge them through the situations that they are in, but as we all know,
there are always three sides within a storytheirs, yours and the truth.