Our Lives as Atoms - Times Select - New York Times Blog
It is four years and a few days since CBS News published the first photos documenting the systematic abuse, torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The Bush administration and the American military have worked hard to firmly establish the “few bad apples” explanation of what happened. Eight low-ranking soldiers were convicted, and Staff Sargent Ivan Frederick II, who was found guilty of assault, conspiracy, dereliction of duty and maltreatment of detainees, is now halfway through his eight-year prison sentence.
But there are very good reasons to think that Frederick and the others, however despicable their actions, only did what many of us would have done if placed in the same situation, which puts their guilt in a questionable light. Can someone be guilty just for acting like most ordinary human beings?
But you and I cannot look at Frederick and the other guards as moral monsters, because none of us can know that we’d have acted differently. The evidence suggests that most of us wouldn’t have. The coercion of the social context was too powerful.
The second conclusion is that those really responsible for the abuse, on a deeper and more systematic level, still should be brought to justice. They’re in the upper tiers of the military chain of command and its civilian leadership; they’re in the White House.
