My Lai Massacre

The Milgram Experiment, Philip Zimbardo, and Understanding the My Lai Massacre

In the twentieth century the United States military was engaged in numerous wars and the U.S. government depicted these wars as forces of good, freedom, and morality (Americans) fighting against forces of evil, tyranny, and barbarism (America's enemies). The realities of American military behavior in these wars, however, did not always justify such a simplistic characterization. American troops at times committed war crimes and atrocities such as My Lai massacre in Vietnam and sexualized torture against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. When these crimes were revealed to the public, American civilian and military leaders tried to minimize their significance by suggesting that what happened at My Lai and Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents committed by a "few bad apples." But the "few bad apples" thesis does not fully explain the My Lai and...
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