http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0526/p15s01-lire.html Living > Religion & Ethics
from the May 26, 2004 edition
Why are they smiling?The stresses of war can distort morality and draw out the worst in human nature, psychologists say, but sadistic behavior is not inevitable.
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
The camera doesn't lie, but it does raise a troubling question: As human beings are treated like animals, why is this "girl next door" smiling?
That question continues to haunt a disbelieving American public which in April gasped to see a photo of GI Lynndie England cheerily leading around a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash at Abu Ghraib prison. Apparently ordinary guys, too, posed - with smiles - beside men they'd allegedly beaten and piled high in a pyramid to get them to talk. Just following orders, some said, yet the question remains: Why such happy faces?
Psychologists, theologians, and a journalist who researched war for years hold that, under certain conditions, otherwise ordinary people can be susceptible to adopting a warped mentality in which they take pleasure in another's suffering - also known as sadism.
What, exactly, causes some people to engage in sadistic behavior is something of a mystery, they say. But most cite the strangeness of a war zone, where otherwise honorable people - awash in feelings of duty, camaraderie, and revenge - sometimes lose the moral compass that guided their behavior in their former lives.
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