Reply #75: Folks need to Google "The Milgram Experiment" [View All]

65% of subjects were willing to administer what they thought would be a lethal electric charge to another "test subject," even when that person was writhing in faked pain, simply because they were told to do so by a guy in a lab coat. Ordinary people, and the results have been replicated. Now imagine what can happen when you have someone who has been put into a military culture, wherein killing of the enemy is normalized, and then they are told that the folks they are to visit in the middle of the night are the enemy. If they go along with orders, they get medals, promotions and eventually a nice pension. They don't have to tell anyone they did anything questionable, in fact they are under orders not to, because it's a secret and a matter of national security.

"Our boys are good boys, they would never do something like this." The rationalizations some people give sound like something that the mother of a condemned serial killer might tell herself to get to sleep at night. There's a presumption of innocence, but, at this point, for folks to not be able to conceive that this is possible, for US or any other soldiers, goes beyond a failure of imagination to the point of willful ignorance.

It is true that there are men and women serving who are like Ethan McCord



and Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr.



But they are, sadly, in the minority, not just in the military, but everywhere.