Much of the discussion of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison has focused on assigning blame for the atrocities. Are the abusesthe result of a handful of misguided individuals — "sick bastards," as the attorney for Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, characterized them in The New York Times — or, are commanders to blame?

In interviews with the Dart Center, experts on war crimes and war psychology warn against assigning blame to a "few bad apples." Responsibility should fall not only on the low-ranking individuals who committed the abuses, they said, but also on the commanders who created the conditions that allowed the abuses to take place. And, they said, while there is no evidence of a direct order to commit the abuses, the vague orders that apparently were issued, combined with a lack of command oversight and an atmosphere of dehumanization, were sufficient to sow the seeds of atrocity.

"The few-rotten-apples theory is bad psychology," said psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton. "It's wrong psychology in trying to understand what happened." Lifton, who has written books about the Vietnam War and Nazi war crimes, among many other subjects, characterized the situation at Abu Ghraib prison as what he calls "an atrocity-producing situation," which he explained is "an environment structured so that an ordinary person could enter it and commit atrocities." Such an environment, Lifton said, "brings out the potential sadism that might be in any of us." However, he added, "Even in an atrocity-producing situation, people are responsible for their own behavior."

"Blame has to be shared all around," said Herbert C. Kelman, the Richard Clarke Cabot Research Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard, who co-authored the 1989 book, Crimes of Obedience, which examined the social and psychological factors that lead to war-time atrocities. "You certainly can't blame only the people at the lowest rung," he said. "To leave it at that level would be really a failure in the basic rules of accountability." However, Kelman said, "Following orders is, in itself, not an excuse. It's a mitigating circumstance, but it's not an excuse."

Echoes of My Lai

Kelman and Lifton both see parallels between the Abu Ghraib atrocities and those committed at My Lai during the Vietnam war. Though the abuses at Abu Ghraib do not approach the level of horror at My Lai, both cases are marked by factors common to "atrocity-producing situations" or "crimes of obedience."

In both cases, vague directions from superiors gave troops "room for improvisation," as Lifton put it. In both cases, the soldiers' role was limited, allowing them - in their own minds, at least - to transfer ultimate responsibility to other parties: their role was only one step in the process. In both cases, an absence of oversight allowed the atrocious behavior to feed on itself.

In My Lai, on March 16, 1968, as many as 500 unarmed civilians - most of them women, children or old men - were killed by American soldiers. The soldiers who did the killing were acting on orders to conduct a "search and destroy" mission in the subhamlet of My Lai 4; they entered the village with the understanding that the only people present would be Viet Cong soldiers, and they were prepared to shoot anyone they encountered. The massacre went on for more than two hours, with higher commanders not taking any decisive action to stop the killing.

At Abu Ghraib - where the extent of the atrocities is not yet publicly known - soldiers were given orders to "set the conditions" for interrogations. The prisoners to be interrogated were chosen by military intelligence personnel, allowing the abusers to assume that the prisoners brought to them were likely guilty of some offense. The soldiers were apparently unsupervised while they "set the conditions."

Dehumanization of the enemy is common to all war situations; it allows soldiers to overcome moral restraints against atrocious behavior. Kelman and Lifton agreed that rhetoric from U.S. leaders about "evil" and "evildoers" helped to dehumanize Iraqis. Kelman noted that, though such rhetoric was aimed at Saddam Hussein's regime and not Iraqi citizens, in a counter-insurgency, such a distinction is difficult for troops to make. The distinction is even harder to make in a prison setting, where "prisoners had the mark of guilt on them already," Kelman said.

Psychiatrist and author Jonathan Shay characterized the attitude created by the administration's rhetoric as "They're evil and anything goes." He said that the U.S. policy that the prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, is not bound by the Geneva Conventions sends the message that the U.S. is beyond the reach of international law.

Lifton said that counter-insurgency wars are particularly conducive to atrocities. "One is most likely to encounter atrocity-producing situations in counter-insurgency wars when there is hostility in the environment, and fear and confusion in relation to an elusive enemy who can't be easily identified," he said.

Why are some able to resist?

Another factor common to Abu Ghraib and My Lai is that some soldiers refused to take part in the atrocities. Also, both atrocities came to public attention through the efforts of soldiers who were upset by what had occurred.

Although soldiers are trained not to follow illegal orders, Lifton said that resistance in an atrocity-producing situation is unusual. "It's some combination of conscience and courage," he said.

Kelman said there is not much data to indicate what makes some people able to resist illegal orders, while others follow them. It depends mainly, he said, on "how people relate themselves to authority."

Shay said that atrocities are not necessarily inevitable in war, as some commentators have claimed. "It may be that any war that goes on long enough will produce some of these situations, but it's not something that's intrinsic in warfare," he said.

Shay, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist, said the overall conduct of American troops has, in his view, improved since Vietnam, mainly due to the reaction following the My Lai atrocities. He believes the slogan "No More My Lais," which has been in use for three decades, reflects a sincere desire among most commanders to avoid atrocities. "I think it is generally true that the troops in Iraq are better behaved than they were in Vietnam," he said. "Atrocious behavior is just profoundly destructive to the military services, and they don't want it to happen, and I perceive that as sincere."

"All the armed forces took a terribly destructive beating in Vietnam from trying to fight an insurgent war and doing it badly, and doing it ignorantly and failing at it," he said. "They don't want to repeat that."

» The Crimes of War Project
» Coverage of the abuse at Abu Ghraib by The New Yorker's Seymour M. Hersh
» "Implausible Denial," a look at the chain of command by Dart Ochberg Fellow Jason Vest