Tag: military

Misrepresenting or minimizing consequences (Moral disengagement, part 6)

Posted on by kathiemm

Misrepresenting or minimizing consequences is another moral disengagement mechanism.

Psychologist Albert Bandura notes that when people commit atrocities for personal gain or as a response to social pressure, one way to offset shame and guilt is to minimize or distort the ill-effects of their behavior.

During contemporary warfare by the developed nations, this process is facilitated by modern technology, which allows maiming and killing from high in the air–thus avoiding the sight of blood, guts, and dismembered bodies; the screams of pain, pleas for help; and victims begging for an end to their ordeal.

It has been noted that the Pulitzer-prize winning photograph of the naked Vietnamese girl running from her napalmed village played a pivotal role in turning the American public against the Vietnam War.

To avoid a repetition of that kind of public disavowal of their political and military aims, more recent governments have exercised extreme control over media portrayals of wartime events.

Misrepresenting and minimizing consequences is rampant in relation to the environmental consequences of war. Among the long-lasting effects of war that are minimized right out of people’s consciousness are:

  • Sunken ships that continue to pollute the oceans
  • Landmines that continue to maim and kill
  • Hazardous waste from the manufacturing of weapons
  • Destruction and pollution of wildlife and human habitat through use of herbicidal weapons such as Agent Orange
  • Environmental degradation from the thousands of refugees fleeing the armed conflict.

(For more about environmental consequences of war, see the report of the Environmental Literacy Council.)

In reaction to the minimizing, misrepresenting, and denial of the environmental effects of war, the United Nations, in 2001, declared November 6 to be  International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.

More than a few “bad apples”: American soldiers, the legacy of torture, and the trauma behind it

Posted on by kathiemm

[Editor’s Note:  In today’s post, we introduce a new feature to our engagingpeace.com blog. Periodically we intend to offer a brief review of a contemporary book that sheds light on issues such as war, torture, terrorism and their aftermaths, as well as on peace, reconciliation, and apology and forgiveness. We also invite our readers to submit commentaries on books they have found helpful.]

Review of None of us were like this before: American soldiers and torture By Joshua E.S. Phillips

Reviewed by Charikleia TsatsaroniNone of us were like this before

In this thought-provoking and revealing book, Joshua Phillips asks why U.S. forces and officials believed that torture was effective, permissible, and necessary, and what were the factors that led them to engage in such practices.

He begins his quest with the death of Sergeant Adam Gray, who made it home from Iraq and died in his barracks. Phillips then guides us through his interviews with ordinary American soldiers, their families and friends, victims of torture, military, governmental, and intelligence officials, human rights lawyers, and activists, to name a few.

These interviews provide many examples of Albert Bandura’s socio-cognitive mechanisms of moral disengagement (e.g., advantageous comparison, euphemistic labeling) as the expanding set of individuals connected with the use of torture try to make sense of what happened.

Phillips’ narratives lead inevitably to the idea that Americans who engaged in torture were not just a “few bad apples” (p. ix) and that the factors leading to torture did not lie only within individuals but also and most importantly within the societal context and its interwoven systems.

His book also strongly reinforces the importance of greater attention to the trauma inflicted on soldiers by their involvement in torture and abuse; it is apparent that most of his interviewees deal daily with personal demons.

Overall, I would recommend this very readable book for its eye-opening narrative and its ability to keep you involved until its painful ending, which highlights the fact that wars have victims on both sides.

Even physically untouched “victors” can bear wounds forever because of what they did in the context of war.

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.

Displacement of responsibility (Moral disengagement, part 5)

Posted on by kathiemm

The fourth mechanism of moral disengagement described by Albert Bandura is displacement or diffusion of responsibility.

Man with crossed arms, fingers pointing at others ("don't blame me")
Photo by Achim Hering (Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. From Wikimedia Commons)

Displacement of responsibility refers to claims that, for example, you are not being immoral when committing an atrocity while “just following orders.” Such claims dominated the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II.

Under the Nuremberg Principles, which are the basis of current international law, “only following orders” has explicitly been identified as an unacceptable defense.  Nevertheless, it continues to appear in military contexts and probably led to the reducing of Lt. William Calley’s sentence for the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

More recently, in preparing the nation to accept his plan to invade Iraq, President George W. Bush declared: “Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination…. History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act.”

In other words, it is not our fault that we are going to war; they made us do it.

After the fall of Iraq, when informed about the rioting and looting going on, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his infamous remark, “Stuff happens,” another way of avoiding responsibility for the chaos.

It is easy to find online many quotes from U.S. leaders concerning the war in Iraq. Take a look at them and see how many examples you can find of displacement or avoidance of responsibility and the other mechanisms of moral disengagement we have been discussing.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.