Analysis Of The My Lai Massacre : A Military Crime Of Obedience

Over 4 decades ago, a Stanford psychology professor named Phillip G. Zimbardo administered an experiment that re-created a prison environment. The goal of the experiment was to simply study the process by which prisoners and guards “learn” to become compliant and authoritarian, respectively (Zimbardo 732). What would emerge from the “Stanford Prison Experiment” article were more than just compliance and authority. The experiment gave rise to the nature of evil and obedience in human beings. Thus like Zimbardo’s experiment, Stanley Milgram’s “The Peril of Obedience” found that under certain circumstances and conditions, human beings were also capable of being immensely subdued to

After reading these documents, My Lai was nothing less than a massacre. After investigation it was brought to light that over 500 women, children, and elderly were killed at this time. There was ordered given from Captain Medina that were uphled by Sergeant Calley to kill, and to leave no one. This of course, is completely inhumane and unjustified. But many, many people died. The murdering was stopped by the bravery of Hugh Thompson who put himself and his helicopter, occupied by his company, in-between the Vietnamese people trying to escape and the American Soldiers. This ending the event and letting some survive.

Being able to follow an order in the military is one of the most important aspects of being a solider. Military discipline and effectiveness is built on obedience, and recruits are taught to obey immediately and without question. Throughout A Few Good Men, Dawson contested that he was just following the orders he was given, “We did nothing wrong, sir. We did our job. If it has consequences, then I accept them. But I won’t say I’m guilty, sir [...] But I believe I did my job. I won’t dishonor myself, my unit, or the Corps, so that I can go home in six months” (51-52). Dawson felt

     On March 16, 1968, in the Quang Ngai region of Vietnam, specifically My Lai, the United States military was involved in an appalling slaughter of approximately 500 Vietnamese civilians. There are numerous arguments as to why this incident even had the capacity to occur. Although some of the arguments seem valid, can one really make excuses for the slaughter of innocent people? The company that was responsible for the My Lai incident was the Charlie Company and throughout the company there were many different accounts of what happened that reprehensible day. Therefore there are a few contradictions about what had occurred, such as what the commanding officers exact instructions for the soldiers were. Even

In the movie A Few Good Men, there is a large overlying problem in how Dawson and Downey succumb to blindly following their superior’s crude moral values. In his article “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem,” Erich Fromm studies the acts of obedience and the subsequent disobedience from a psychological standpoint. He begins by attesting disobedience to the beginning of true human life and obedience to the lingering doom that humans faced during the cold war. He continues to further break apart obedience into separate influential categories. Finally ending with the instructions as to how one learns to disobey (Fromm 12. In his article “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror,” Crispin Sartwell explains the men who served as the

On March 16, 1968, U.S. Outfitted power troops murdered more than 300 unarmed Vietnamese women, adolescents, and elderly persons. Right when the truths of the butcher influenced the opportunity to be known, reviled thing charges were brought against 30 officers, and there was a checked development in both family and remote weight to end the war.

Obedience is an important part of daily life that everybody acts upon whether they realize it or not. Theodore Dalrymple wrote the article, “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You,” who better explains obedience with real life experiences arguing that obedience is a key aspect in any job. Along with this, Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton wrote the article, “The My Lai Massacre,” which dissects the different characteristics of obedience that makes people act the way they do. All authors look at obedience in a new light. These different characteristics of obedience that Darlrymple, Kelman, and Hamilton all explain in their articles help us better understand the movie A Few Good Men.

In Stanley Milgram’s essay, “Perils of Disobedience”, an experiment was conducted to test an individual’s obedience from authority when conflicting with morally incorrect orders. Following the conclusion of World War Two, Milgram’s essay was published in Harper’s Magazine, which appeals to a national audience and yields an array of content from different contextual backgrounds. As Milgram reports the results of his experiment, he provides descriptive details of many of the subjects and their behaviors when conflicted with following orders that hurt another individual. Among other rhetorical elements in his essay, Milgram utilizes the format of his writing in order to fully convey his evidence in a compelling manner to the reader. Milgram’s

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a controversial experiment on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He examined the justifications for acts of genocide given by those accused at the World War II Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on "obedience,” and that they were “just following orders from their superiors” (McLeod, Saul. Milgram Experiment, Simply Psychology).

Mistakes are common in everyday circumstances, but when the mistakes happen in the military, it could cost a person’s life. In the movie A Few Good Men, two marines, Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private Louden Downey, are on trial for the murder of Private William Santiago because they had followed orders from their commanding officer to give Santiago a Code Red. The trial was not about if they were guilty or not, but about obedience in the military. Kaffee had to prove that Dawson and Downey were just following orders from a commanding officer and they were not guilty because they were performing their duties as marines in the military. At the end, Dawson and Downey’s superior officer, Colonel Jessup, was charged for the crime, but Dawson and Downey were dishonorably discharged from the marines. Even though they were following orders from their commanding officer, they realized that they had a responsibility of protecting and standing up for those who could not. In the article, “My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience,” Kelman and Hamilton explain and talk about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and how authorization, routinization, and dehumanization were used to commit the massacre. The “Stanford Prison Experiment” was used to reveal the effects of being in power and the struggle between the “prisoners” and “prison officers.” The process of obedience, authorization, routinization, and dehumanization, is used to create the perfect scenario for Dawson and Downey for

The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder conducted by a unit of the U.S. army on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens, all of whom were women, children, and elderly.

Studying obedience to authority most often reveals human nature repugnantly; however, it teaches society individual capability and, thus, it can prevent unethical actions. In the film, A Few Good Men, Col. Nathan R. Jessup, the commanding officer at Guantanamo Bay Cuba orders a “code red” – an unsanctioned disciplinary action against Pfc. William T. Santiago. Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey, two U.S. Marines, are the fellow platoon members that implement the code red, and Lt. Daniel Kaffee defends Dawson and Downey in court. Erich Fromm, author of “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem,” and a social psychologist analyzes the origins of obedience and disobedience as well as different kinds of obedience

I will elaborate using the deontoligical ethical theory to compare it to a soldier at war duty . When it comes to just and unjust killing in the person considered a target . I will then look at the argument from a different angle and show that how deontoligical

It is interesting to see human behavior when put into a difficult situation that may force them to harm others when they do not want to, but will anyways. It is human nature to always do what is best for themselves and their safety, but people tend to harm others when they can shift the blame off themselves for causing them harm. As for example the milgram experiment is a great example showing people will cause harm under given command. This is not true for everyone, but for most people it is. People will harm others, but kept telling the instructor that they want to stop. The instructor told them they must keep on going, the first response would be I do not want to blamed for hurting the person, soon as instructor took the responsibility then the they would continue to cause pain. A movie that takes a closer look into this situation is A Few Good Men directed by Red Reiner. Some of the main actors were Tom Cruise who played Lt. Daniel Kaffee and is a lawyer that is defending the marines in a murder case, Jack Nicholson who played Col. Nathan R. Jessup is the leader of marines stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Demi Moore who played LT. Cdr. Joanne Galloway is part of the team with Kaffee to defend marnie in the murder case, James Marshall who played Pfc. Louden Downey is the marine who is trialed for murder and disorderly conduct. To quick run over the movie, it was about two marines officers who gave another

In the film A Few Good Men directed by Rob Reiner, Lt. j.g. Daniel Kaffee is hired to be the lawyer for Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey. Both of these men are accused of killing Pfc. William T. Santiago, so Kaffee, Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway, and Lt. j.g. Sam Weinberg fight for their justice. In “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience” authors Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton claim that the act on My Lai was an example of indefinite orders from one authority to another. The men of Charlie Company were ordered to go into the village of My Lai and destroy it in search of Viet Cong, which none were found. The massacre was covered up, but unveiled in later years, which then the men of Charlie Company were put on trial to see if they did the right or wrong thing. In the article “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism,” author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak explains how people can become sadistic to individuals around them in certain situations. The article focuses on the steps people take to torture other individuals and why people perform these steps. The article “The Perils of Obedience” author Stanley Milgram asserts that obedience is a deep-rooted behavior in everyone that overrules other human characteristics. Milgram set up an experiment at Yale, where he had a two strangers in separate rooms, one received a shock and one transmitted the shock. The individual sending the shock was in a room with a man who pressured them to continue, just