Group Think

According to today’s Washington Post, in 2003 in Samaarra, Iraq, an Army intelligence sergeant went to his commanding officer and dropped a dime on members of his unit concerning abuses being perpetrated on Iraqi detainees. The commander, in turn, accused the sergeant of being delusional and ordered him to undergo psychiatric evaluation in Germany despite having been judged stable by a psychiatrist at his own base.

The sergeant had recommended that the intelligence unit be transferred away from the Samaaran base before members of the unit killed some of those incarcerated. He accused fellow soldiers of asphyxiating prisoners, pulling their hair, striking them, and staging mock executions.

These and similar charges are disturbing and are grist for many opponents of the war. While counting myself among that group and, of course, disgusted by the charges of abuse, I served in the army during and shortly after the Korean War and saw how pressure can influence behavior. In my first novel, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick, I described an incident in which during war games atrocities were perpetrated by one team against another. That incident actually happened. We diffused the situation before anyone was seriously injured, but it left a vivid impression on me. (I hasten to add that I never served in or even near combat.)

I understand how these things can happen, especially in the climate of fear and pressure described by those court martialled for the Abu Ghraib incidents, and it leads me to a belief in group think. Bureaucracies - public, military, and private – get caught up in a climate of paranoia and can go mad. Think about the Holocaust, the Gulags, and even companies such as Enron and one can only conclude that bureaucratic madness took place in each case – not that these actions were in any way equivalent.

One of my history professors was German born and described to the class how he and his peers were forced to go to Nazi rallies. Of course we’ve all seen newsreels of the prewar rallies in which the fantastic pagan rituals of torch lit parades and mass hailing and saluting of Hitler took place to the sounds of Wagner and powerful martial music. The professor had an inside view and described the feelings of those massed for the event. Everyone was watching everyone else and the climate of fear was such that all feared being turned in as a non-believer and thus performed as madly as possible.

In the Soviet Union, dissidents were often sent to psychiatric hospitals. In the United States we thought that this was a sign of bureaucratic corruption, but in retrospect I wonder if it was not the case of true believers unable to comprehend that their vision of the world was not honest and that of the opposition mean spirited.

While I don’t know the circumstances in this case, I’m more than sympathetic to both the sergeant who appears to have been grounded in reality and the commander who simply could not comprehend anything but the institutional dynamic.

So it is in our larger society today. During the past election we saw and heard some amazing charges made against both candidates for president. These are big boys, so I don’t worry about them, but I have to wonder about their followers who in a different era with little prodding could burn their opponents at the stake.

Well it was something to ponder, but the clock on the wall just struck four and it’s time to go.

Blog on!

Wild Bill