Responsibility and Chance

After watching half of the Abu Ghraib video, two things have really stuck out in my mind. The two subjects are responsibility and chance. It seems in the video, as if no one wants to take responsibility for what happened. The soldiers say "it was the MI" who were doing it, the MI say they were told to do those things. At the same time, I think it's impossible to blame them solely because what are the chances that all of the soldiers that were told to watch over Abu Ghraib were all evil people who enjoyed torturing people? It's very unlikely.

When thinking about both of those terms and how they intertwine, it makes me think there seems to be one problem; when you give people power without rules, humanity goes out the window and power takes its place. In the video, some of the guards said they saw what was going on and the commanders and people in power told them not to say anything and mind their own business. If there is an institution where someone has the power to make another "be quiet", anything can happen. The whole idea of this hierarchy and it being in a prison, reminds me of the Stanford Prison experiment.

http://www.prisonexp.org/