Blog #21: Quotes

The military officers that were located at prisons, such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, committed crimes of torture and dehumanization of their prisoners. The reason for committing these hateful acts was because of the situational pressures and the orders given to them by higher up authority figures. It is believed that they were overwhelmed at the fact that torture was acceptable and normalized. However, they did commit these acts of torture, so they must all be held accountable for the dehumanizing of the prisoners. Many of them did view their prisoners as demons who were inessential or superfluous to them. This is idea believed to have come from the orders given and the anger from the terrorist acts on the U.S. In the article, “Abu Ghraib and the Normalization of Torture and Hate,” Alkadry and Witt state that “the soldiers who committed the crimes must be held accountable, they were overwhelmed by a sense that torture was acceptable and that their victims were superfluous demons” (Alkadry 136). The author is basically saying that the military officers who committed the torture acts are to be held responsible for them. This quote is also stating that the soldiers were overwhelmed by the idea that the acts they committed were right and that they were not going to be in any trouble with the military for them. Also they believed that their prisoners were some type of demon that was superfluous and inessential to them. This shows how the soldiers were confused on what was right and what was wrong when it came to the treatment of their prisoners. It comes down to the fact that they had previous ideas and orders that made it seem as if torturing their prisoners was acceptable, when it was clearly not.