A Few Good Men

A Few Good Men Analysis In the movie A Few Good Men, two U.S Marines, Lance Corporal Dawson and Private First Class Downey, are accused of murdering another, weaker, marine by the name of PFC William Santiago. Their orders to perform a “code red” were given under the authority of Colonel Nathan Jessup, their commanding officer. It is up to their lawyer Daniel Kaffee and his group, Liutentent Sam Weinberg and Liutentent Commander Joanne Galloway, to prove that Dawson and Downey were strictly following orders and had no intentions of killing PFC Santiago. Their defense is obedience. However, here in lies the question: “Where does one draw the line between following orders and following one’s own morals?” Two articles, “The Abu Ghraib Prison

The first article written by Marianne Szegedy-Masszak is written over the ‘horrific physical abuse and humiliation committed by American Military guards against Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison” (Szegedy-Maszak 75). This article uses both the Stanford Prison experiment and the Stanley Milgram experiment to compare the actions of the soldiers in Iraq. It delves into the reasoning behind their behavior such as a way to “…work[ing] off the rage, anxiety about their own safety and their sense of helplessness” (Szegedy-Maszak 76). The second article, written by Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton is over “one of the worse atrocities committed by the U.S. military: The My Lai Massacre.” where up to 500 elders, women and children were brutally killed by the U.S. military (Kemlan and Hamilton 131). Both articles speak on three major reasons as to why crime of obedience happens; authorization,

For example, when commands were given to Dawson and Downey they no longer had a say in whether or not the command should be followed, they were told by an authority that what was to be done was necessary. Along with authorization comes justification. Kelman and Hamilton write “… when acts of violence are explicitly ordered, implicitly encouraged, tactically approved or at least permitted by legitimate authorities, peoples readiness to commit or condone them is enhanced” (Kelman and Hamilton 139). For example, during the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal the soldiers were being told they were doing a “great job” and to “keep it up” (Szegedy-Maszak 76). This encouragement gave the soldiers a sense of justification. It is observed that people are more prone to be obedient when an authority figure has ordered them to do a certain task, and for more than one reason. One of the reasons the soldiers from the My Lai Massacre, Dawson and Downey from the movie and the soldiers from Abu Ghraib could participate in such heinous crimes was because “they were not personal agents but merely extensions of the authority” (Kelman and Hamilton 140). Also, more often than not, people look to please their authorities and are more willing to do things they wouldn’t do if they had not been ordered. Not only do people want to please their authorities but there can also be consequences to