Not every military officer in the U.S. military is bad or evil. Some of those who torture the prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay still have some humanity left in them; it is just that it is suppressed. They only end up doing the wrongful things because of the situational pressures placed on them from the higher authorities and the fact that they cannot stand up for what they believe in. In the article, “Promoting aggression and violence at Abu Ghraib: The U.S. military’s transformation of ordinary people into torturers,” Lankford stated that “the vast majority of people within the military are good people—including some of those who end up doing very bad things” (Lankford 394). Lankford is trying to convey that not everyone is in the military is evil, even though they may seem like it. It is just that they have a hard time doing what is right instead of obeying the orders given to them by their authority figures. It is all about the pressures and orders that they face during combat and how they deal with them. The way the military officers running the prisons deal with the pressures and orders may not be the right way, according to many people. Torturing human beings, even though they did wrong, is not the right way to treat people, but it has to be understood that they are facing a dual loyalty. The dual loyalty they face is one that is their loyalty to their country/military and one that is to their morals and doing what is right. That is why they cannot be considered all bad people with no humanity. They still have some humanity it is just suppressed by their loyalty to their higher authority figures.
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