These past couple of weeks have been painful. The hurt
started with the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad,
and was aggravated as our national leaders testified to Congress
as to how upset they were - not so much upset by the abuse and
humiliation of prisoners, but upset that the pictures had become
public, made us as a nation look bad, and that they were being
called to account for it. Very sad. Very, very sad.
How could this happen? And we cannot excuse it by saying
what Saddam did was worse - my atrocity is not as bad as your
atrocity is not much of an argument. We were supposed to be "the
good guys." This war was presented to us first, as the only way
we could protect ourselves from the weapons of mass destruction
that Saddam had aimed at us, then as the only way to rid the
globe of a horrible and dangerous dictator who would not hesitate
to use torture to get his way, and finally as the way to show the
Arab and Muslim world an Iraq governed by a popular democracy
that could serve as a wonderful example for the Middle East as we
move into the 21st century. What a mess. What we have now is a
problem with the Arab and Muslim world that will be with us for a
long, long, long time. As one columnist wrote, "seldom has such
harm been done to so many by so few."(1)
What bothers you most about those pictures? There may be as
many answers to that as there are people here, but for me, I am
not so much concerned by all the naked bodies, the hoods, the
dangling wires and the dog leash. I am concerned about the all-American girl in the pictures, the smiling face of Lynndie
England, a Private First Class in the Army Reserves from a small
town in West Virginia. This is the girl next door, just like
another young West Virginian, Jessica Lynch. Is this, as
military commanders, members of the Administration and, indeed,
the Commander-in-Chief have been quick to state, simply a matter
of "bad apples?" Is President Bush correct in saying that they
are an exceptional "few" whose actions "do not reflect the nature
of the men and women who serve our country?"
Well, for what it is worth, the families and friends of the
accused say the very opposite is true. There is nothing
exceptional about Lynndie and her comrades. They are normal,
patriotic Americans who put their lives on the line to serve
their country but went astray because they followed orders. Is
that true?
Those accused so far are all members of the 372nd Military
Police Company, a unit of reservists from Appalachia who were
trained to be traffic cops, not prison guards (which, in itself,
says something about what is happening over there). In fact,
their first assignment in Iraq last summer was in keeping with
their training: directing traffic, leading convoys, keeping roads
open. Many had signed on as teenagers, as Lynndie England did,
to get some extra income and, down the road, college benefits -
she dreamed of becoming a storm-chasing meteorologist, according
to her family. They all anticipated serving one weekend a month
and two weeks in the summer but knew they could be called up in
case of a national emergency. They did not figure on being
shipped halfway around the world, but they were willing.
Patriotism runs deep in their part of the country.
Suddenly, last October, these patriotic traffic cops were
assigned a new duty - Abu Ghraib, the prison made infamous as
Saddam Hussein's national torture chamber. This is where things
began to unravel. Army regulations limit the intelligence-gathering role of MP's to "passive collection" (simply passing on
information that they might overhear), but members of the 372nd
found themselves fielding requests from military intelligence
officers, who were in charge of part of the prison, to "set
physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of
witnesses." In other words, soften 'em up. This is according to
Major General Antonio Taguba who investigated all this. So they
did. And the result is what we have been treated to on
television for these past couple of weeks.
Bad apples? Just following orders? I am less concerned by
those questions than I am by what I know to be true. I would
love to find some scapegoat in all this, but the truth is that
this happened because they were normal human beings, just like
you and me. Psychologists and historians who study torture know
it and report it. Under certain circumstances, almost anyone has
the capacity to commit the atrocities seen in the photos that
have shocked the world. I was a guard at Abu Ghraib. And so
probably were you.
According to an article in this week's TIME magazine,(2)
psychologists who have studied torture and prisoner abuse say it
is remarkably easy for people to lapse into sadistic behavior
when they have complete power over other human beings, especially
if they feel the behavior has been sanctioned by an authority
figure. In a classic series of studies conducted at Yale in the
1960's, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that psychologically
healthy volunteers did not hesitate to administer what they
thought were electric shocks to another human being when
instructed to do so by a researcher. Two-thirds followed
instructions and kept raising the voltage - right up to levels
marked danger: severe shock and XXX. Milgram found that
compliance was greatest when participants could not see the face
of their subject (although they could hear an actor's fake
screams) and when they took their instructions from an official-looking scientist in a white lab coat.
The study that probably has the most direct bearing on Abu
Ghraib is one that was conducted at Stanford University in 1971.(3)
It offered the world a videotaped demonstration of how ordinary
people - middle-class college students - can do things they would
have never believed they were capable of doing. Details of the
experiment are well known and are included in most basic
psychology texts. "60 Minutes" has done a segment on the
experiment. I am told there is even a punk rock band called the
Stanford Prison Experiment.
On Sunday morning, August 17, 1971, nine young men were
"arrested" in their homes by Palo Alto police. They were among
some 70 young men, mostly college students eager to earn $15 a
day for two weeks, who volunteered as subjects for an experiment
on prison life. After interviews and a battery of psychological
tests, the two dozen judged to be the most normal, average and
healthy were selected to participate, and assigned randomly
either to be guards or prisoners. Those who would be prisoners
were booked at a real jail, then blindfolded and driven to campus
where they were led into a makeshift prison. Those assigned to
be guards were given uniforms and instructed that they were not
to use violence but that their job was to maintain control of the
prison.
From the perspective of the researchers, the experiment
became exciting on day two when the prisoners staged a revolt.
Once the guards had crushed the rebellion, "they steadily
increased their coercive aggression tactics, humiliation and
dehumanization of the prisoners." That is the recollection of
Dr. Phillip Zimbardo who oversaw the experiment. "The staff had
to frequently remind the guards to refrain from such tactics," he
said, and the worst instances of abuse occurred in the middle of
the night when the guards thought the staff was not watching. It
got so bad, so sick and sadistic, so quickly, that the entire
experiment had to be cancelled after only six days. Good people
have the capacity within them to do horrible things.
And by the way, being a person of faith does not offer
immunity from awful behavior. We got a reminder of that this
week when the government announced it is reopening the
investigation into the murder of 14-year-old Emmitt Till in
Mississippi in 1955 that galvanized the civil rights movement.
What was the norm back then in that most publically-pious part of
the country? Verbal abuse, psychological abuse, physical
torture, shootings and lynchings. Where were the Christians when
this was going on? Right there, unfortunately. Some directly
involved. Some passively involved by doing nothing. A
comparative few saying this ought not to be. Christians.
We ask again what we asked at the beginning of this, "How
could this happen?" The quick answer is that there is evil in
the world that is beyond imagining, and whether we like it or
not, regardless of all our self-righteous national protestations,
we are caught up in it.
Fortunately, that is not the final word. Our lesson from
Revelation provides what Paul Harvey calls "the rest of the
story." The text is part of the Bible's vision of the
consummation of history. After all the persecutions and battles
and disasters presented in the first part of Revelation, finally
the powers of evil are defeated and the holy city comes down out
of heaven to a renewed earth. That in itself is something of a
surprise because we are so used to the idea that salvation means
finally "going to heaven."
But then there is another surprise. Throughout Revelation
the nations of the earth and their kings seem to have been
uniformly fighting against God and God's people. But now here
come "the kings of the earth" riding through the gates of the New
Jerusalem to "bring their splendor into it." And just so we do
not miss the point, it is repeated: "The glory and honor of the
nations will be brought into it." That means all the good that
has been accomplished in history, no matter by whom it may have
been done. But there are things that are excluded -- "Nothing
impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is
shameful or deceitful." There is an ultimate divine judgment of
value. That raises another question for us: when all is said and
done, which of the accomplishments of our nation will be within
the walls of the holy city and which will have to be left
outside?
As you know, I have made no secret of my opposition to this
war since the beginning. So saying, I know there are many others
who were convinced that we had no choice but to proceed in this
direction. Whether, as Secretary of State Powell has said, the
events at Abu Ghraib become this war's version of Viet Nam's My
Lai massacre that causes a national reassessment, only time will
tell. One way or the other, my prayer is that it ends soon and
our troops can come home.
I wish the atrocities at Abu Ghraib had never happened.
But, I understand how they did. Given the right circumstances,
that could have been me or you over there. But if we had been,
my hope is that we would have been the ones who blew the whistle.
In 1629, in a sermon preached on board the ship the
Arabella, John Winthrop, the soon-to-be governor of the Plymouth
colony, offered a vision of what this new world might become.
The sermon was titled "A Model of Christian Charity" and aimed to
inspire the travelers to establish the most devout, pious, and
righteous society ever known, one that could be an example for
the rest of the world. He says, "We must consider that we shall
be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so
that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have
undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from
us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.(4)
That is even more true now than it was almost 400 years ago. The
world IS watching, and now can see us, for good or ill, 24 hours
a day and seven days a week. Please, God, help us do it right.
Amen!
1. Nancy Gibbs, "Their Humiliation, and Ours," TIME, 5/17/04, p. 88
2. Claudia Wallis, "Why Did They Do It?", TIME, 5/17/04, p. 42
3. "The Stanford Prison Experiment: Still powerful after all these years," Stanford
University News Service, http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/relaged/970108prisonexp.html
4. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, p. 180 quoted in "The Immediate Word," an internet resource for preaching at http://www.csspub.com
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