Governmental and Military Deviance
I. Social pschological dynamics of organizational deviance: Groupthink
A. Defn(Irving Janis): group norms that bolster morale at the expense of critical thinking
B. Example: President Johnson's Tuesday luncheon group and policy-making in the Vietnam War
Robert McNamara: "In Retrospect: the Tragedies and Lessons of Vietnam" (1995)
C. Characteristics
1. Sanitized, nonmoral language
2. Stereotypical thinking about opponents
3. Treatment of dissenters: increased communication and then exclusion
II. Guerilla warfare in Lawrence, Kansas, during the Civil War (from The West: an Illustrated History, Geoffrey Ward)
A. Background: conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas
B. Civil War
1. Quantrill's raiders, supporters of the Confederacy
2. Union commander Thomas Ewing: "About two-thirds of the families on the occupied farms are kin of ther guerillas and actively involved in feeding, clothing and sustaining them." Arrested several of the wives and sisters of Quantrill's men. The building where they were being kept collapsed, leading to five deaths.
3. Quantrill's raid on Lawrence: 183 men and boys killed, fewer than 20 of them soldiers.
NY Daily Times: "In the history of war... there has been no such diabolical work as this indiscriminate slaughter of peaceful villagers."
Richmond Examiner: "The expedition to Lawrence was a gallant and perfectly fair blow at the enemy..."
4. General Ewing issued Order Number 11, "which forced from their homes every man, woman, and child living in three Missouri border companies and half of a fourth. Federal troops drove thousands of people onto the open prairie, while Jayhawkers followed in their wake, burning and looting the empty houses they left behind..."
III. Vietnam War and the My Lai massacre: "Crimes of Obedience and Sanctioned Massacres"--Herbert Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton
A. Orders from higher up-- Army's investigation: "...the preponderance of evidence indicates that such destruction (of houses, dwellings, livestock and other foodstuffs in the Song My area) was implied, if not specifically directed by his (LTC Barker's ) orders of 15 March."
B. Expectation that the Viet Cong would occupy the village and that everyone else would be at market... but in the event, the people who were there were mostly old men, women, and children
C. Charlie Company... "incompetent forays led by inexperienced commanders and by mines and booby traps".. "emotion-laden funeral of a sergeant killed by a booby trap the day before the My Lai massacre"
D. "A substantial amount of the killing was organized and traceable to one authority: the First Platoon's Lt. William Calley..." Later charged with 109 killings and convicted of 22... American military law specifically forbids the killing of unarmed civilians, as does the Geneva Convention between nations. Calley: "I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job on that day." Convicted of premeditated murder by a mury of combat veterans.
E. Orders: "An order requiring the performance of a military duty may be inferred to be legal. An act performed manifestly beyond the scope of authority, or pursuant to an order that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know to be illegal, or in a wanton manner in the discharge of a lwful duty, is not excusable." (Par. 216, Subpar. d., Manual for Courts Martial)
F. Lt. Calley to Pfc. Paul Meadlo: "You know what to do" with a group of villagers. Later: "How come they're not dead?"
1. Meadlo cried as he fired.
2. Other enlisted men avoided carrying out orders and at least a few refused to obey them.
3. CWO Hugh Thompson reported the killing to headquarters, urging that it be stopped, and later landed his helicopter and ordered his own men to open fire on the Americans if they contined to shoot the Vietnamese.
F. Coverup: Operation reported as a victory over a stronghold of the Viet Cong Forty-Eighth, despite recovery of only three weapons and despite Thompson's report to headquarters.
G. "Sanctioned massacres:"
1. Context of an overall policy that is explicitly or implicitly genocidal.
2. Can the term apply in Vietnam... no intention to destroy a people, but somewhat same effect from unrestricted air bombings of peasant villages, including crop destruction and defoliation of vast areas of jungle, mass deportation of rural populations
3. Not typically the direct expresion of inordinately intense hatred. "The expressions of anger in the situation itself can more properly be viewed as outcomes rather than causes of the violence."
4. "The major instigators for this class of violence derive from the policy process."
5. Three processes or conditions by which usual moral inhibitions on killing are weakened.
a. Authorization: emphasis on body counts as a measure of success in the Vietnam War
b. Routinization: Arendt's language rules
c. Dehumanization... deprived of identity and community... "Those who participate in the massacre of the victims directly...are reinforced in their perception of the victims as less than human by observing their very victimization."
III. Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Leon Festinger: Simultaneously holding two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent creates a pressure to reduce the dissonance.
Elliot Aronson: "When a person is involved in a situation where he might consider himself to be stupid of immoral, he engages in self-justifying behavior which involves some form of self-persuasion."
A. Cognitive dissonance particularly strong when:
1. Self-concept is involved
2. Actions are voluntary or nearly so.
3. Individual feels responsible for consequences and they matter.
B. Glass: The Justification of Cruelty--an experiment
1. People were induced to deliver what they thought was a series of shocks to other people who had supposedly also been recruited as volunteers.
2. As part of the process, research subjects were tested for self-esteem.
3. As part of the debriefing, subjects were questioned about their impressions of the volunteers who had been shocked.
4. These "victims" were consistently derogated, and those with the highest self-esteem did it the most.
Cognitive dissonance: If I see myself as a basically good and decent fellow, how do I justify what would otherwise seem to be cruelty on my part?