Examples Of Blind Obedience In A Few Good Men

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, hypocrisy and dishonesty outline the pages of the short story. A grandmother whose name remains anonymous continuously bothers her son and his family. She constantly tries to manipulate them to get her own way, in this case, where she wanted to go on vacation. The grandmother states that she is a lady, which is contradicted through her actions in the story. One of her actions which includes her sneaking her cat into the car with her, which later on causes a car accident. One of the character attributes of the grandmother is as stated before: hypocrisy. She chastises her son for his children’s somewhat snooty behavior, but yet towards the end of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” she does not even beg for her

Obedience to people in authority is a deep-rooted trait that we all possess by virtue of our upbringing, and as Milgram put it, “it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others” (Milgram 1974). This trait is exhibited every day in family circles, workplace and school. People are most likely to obey instructions from people they perceive their authority to be legal or moral. We see people obeying their pastors, leaders in various societies and other people they see as higher to them; and they obey anything they are being told even if it involves killing another human being. They justify their actions, however wrong, on obedience to authority.

A Few Good Men portrays the importance of military orders, the reality of the ranking system and how much military leader’s authority can cloud their judgement. Former psychology professor at Yale, Stanley Milgram sought the reasoning behind the blindness of individuals when ordered to perform a task for someone who seems to be an authority figure. His infamous experiment was and is currently being dug through and examined thoroughly. Milgram’s research caught the attention of fellow psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo conducted an experiment with similar interests in mind. He collected 21 men from newspaper advertisements to live in a false prison and live in the prison for two weeks. The experiment lasted six days due to how quickly the experiment escalated and transformed the “prisoners” and “guards” (Zimbardo 116). Their conclusions from both experiments are that power and stress can transform even the strongest willed people. Zimbardo and Milgram discuss the same sort of entitlement Colonel Jessup presumes to order an illegal code red due to his position on the base at Guantanamo Bay; also the entitlement Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee had over the case due to the position his father once had.

Ethics Theory for the Military Professional by Chaplin (COL) Samuel D. Maloney illustrates the complex ethical decision making process. Army Leaders are responsible for professionally, and ethically develop subordinates. Developing unethical subordinates in a zero defect Army is a leadership challenge. Goal-Oriented Aspirations, Rule-Oriented Obligations, and Situation-Oriented Decisions provide leaders an understanding of the ethical decision making process. The first step to Professionally developing subordinates is identifying, and providing input on all subordinate goals. Leaders are obligated to enforce rules and regulations. Understanding subordinate character provides leaders with the information to evaluate a soldier’s integrity. However,

Colonel (Col) Michael Steele’s resolute beliefs regarding how to prepare his unit for combat and his bravado demeanor commanded respect from other bemused military officers. While serving as Commanding Officer (CO), 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Col Steele aggressively cultivated a command climate focused on three core principles: personal protection, precision, and lethality. Although these three core principles narrowly aligned with the Army's "Soldier's Creed", Col Steele’s principles did not reinforce the Army’s individual and organizational core values. 3rd Brigade’s disassociated ethical subculture fostered a toxic environment which compromised both subordinate commanders' and individual soldiers' moral standards to various extents. Col Steele’s vague guidance concerning proper ethical behavior during the execution of high stress Counter-Insurgency (COIN) missions resulted in subordinates failing to conduct kinetic operations in accordance with established Army ethical standards. The military establishment shall remember May 09, 2006 as the day the revered "Rakkasans" failed to personify the unit's motto of "Ne Desit Virtus," meaning "Let Valor Not Fail". For on this day, four soldiers assigned to Charlie Company, known to the “Rakkasans” as the "Kill Company", murdered eight unarmed Iraqi citizens during Operation Iron Triangle. These four soldiers failed to understand the nature and consequences of their iniquities as they could no longer distinguish

This leads Kaffee to defend his clients on the basis on which they simply followed orders from a higher ranking officer, Colonel Jessup (Reiner). According to Milgram’s experiments, even normal, harmless people are able to inflict pain on another individual. The military is based on a chain of command, the Colonel at the top, Privates at the bottom, and everyone else in between. Milgram argues that, when in problematic circumstances, people are proud of doing a good job for their authority (Milgram 221). In other words, they want to obey the orders given in order to please the person holding authority. Could this explain why Dawson and Downey executed the “Code Red”? This is precisely similar to the argument Kelman and Hamilton present in their article “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience”. According to these authors, “American military law assumes that the subordinate is inclined to follow orders…” (Kelman, Hamilton 270). The soldiers in My Lai, although possibly interpreting the orders differently than intended, ultimately did what their commanding officer ordered. The Marines in the film may have also been under the impression that they would not be responsible for any harm which Santiago may endure. Again, Milgram could attest to this argument. He states, “The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards

Browning, in his book Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland, most of the interviewees seem to have a mindset that the killings were wrong but they needed to follow orders. Their attitude was that it was necessary to carry out the orders even though the orders may not have seemed morally or ethically right. The reason the battalion obeyed the orders is because it came from the authorities who had instilled the fear of repercussions in the Reserves and took advantage of the men’s obedience to authority. A quote from Trapp sums up the mindset perfectly when he said, “man… such jobs don’t suit me but orders are orders.” If not out of obedience then what else motivated the men to carry out the orders which led to them becoming mass murderers?

Following orders is of the utmost importance in the military. Obedience is what enables the military to operate in an organized and effective manner which is clearly very important during challenging military situations. While an individual can question the notion of obedience in daily life, this luxury is often not available in the military where the grand goals and aims require smooth internal functioning and hierarchical coordination. Indeed, many of the standards that would be frowned upon outside the military are essential to the work's success within. For example, punishment is not deemed to be a positive occurrence in an average person’s life, whereas the military guide maintains that punishment

The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often

Deceased philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right- only who is left”. Those left are the soldiers of the 1-502nd, specifically Bravo Company 1st plt, and the Janabi family and to a greater extent, the ever-changing global world we all live in today. The tragic events that conspired in a small Iraqi village became a microcosm of how leadership failures at every level shaped the actions of a few soldiers who committed atrocious acts. One can also see how a high operational tempo, along with prolonged violence and death, has on a person’s psyche. It is the ugly side of war that the average American citizen may not want to hear or talk about. For a soldier, it is inevitably what they train their

During the early 1900s, soldiers who fought did not have any say in their actions. They were told what to do, where to go, and who to take up arms against. These actions led to multiple complications and controversies among different World War 1 historians. Soldiers were taught to comply with all orders of their commander and disobeying such commands was rewarded by harsh punishments. Over time however, the soldiers began to see the situation from a different vantage point, As a result, they began to formulate escape plans, and they began to reject orders more frequently, and began to voice disapproval. This behavior infuriated their commanders, so as time progressed the soldiers attitudes changed.

A Few Good Men depicts the court case of two marines, Private First Class Louden Downey and Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson, who had been ordered to perform a "Code Red" on a fellow marine, Private First Class William T. Santiago. Stanley Miligram, a 1970's psychologist who wanted to test obedience in

Combating in modern warfare does not simply mean killing the enemy. There are ethical rules and standards of behavior that soldiers must strictly follow because these rules are essential for defeating the enemy, winning "hearts and minds" of potential allies, and maintain the morale of the troops. These tasks have become especially challenging in the face of the proliferation of guerilla warfare that has been adopted by weaker military forces in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. In fighting insurgencies, abiding by the ethical standards of the Army behavior may be even harder than in fighting conventional battles. The ethical rules may sometimes put the soldiers in dangerous positions. Disregarding the acceptable standards of behavior, however, may have even graver consequences, putting innocent non-combatants at risk and risking total demoralization of the Army unit participating in disorderly behavior. It is therefore essential that Army leaders maintain an ethical command climate during the war.

This paper serves to summarize The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, better known as The Stanford Prison Experiment which was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The purpose of the study was to conduct research in order to better understand the psychological components of human aggression and submission to include conformity and obedience in a prison environment with a select group of subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates, however, I should note, according to McLeod, S. (2016), The Navy’s intent or purpose for the experiment was to better understand how to train members of the armed forces on how to cope with stress associated with captivity as opposed to making American Prison systems more humane. Another interesting point of note is that Zimbardo conducted this experiment shortly after World War II, and the Vietnam War where concern was raised as to some of the atrocities carried out in those wars where “ordinary” people conducted heinous acts per instruction from so-called authoritative figures. Experiments with similar objectives were carried out by Stanley Milgram and others. (Jones, A. D., & Milgram, S. 1974)

Dawson and Downey's participation illustrates ethical relativism because in the base in which they are stationed following the command of a Cornel you follow those orders no matter what. Ethical relativism is basically knowing what right and wrong in a person's culture and in this situation the culture is the base in which the soldiers are stationed. We can evaluate decisions as moral or immoral by using the golden rule as stated in the leadership book. If you would want something to be done onto you then don't do it to somebody else. The action was following the code red which both of them did anyways because they where both scared of the