'Authority In A Few Good Men'

In the movie A Few Good Men, director Rob Reiner displays a conflict between the authority of Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jessep and his subordinates, Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private Louden Downey, who unintentionally kill a fellow soldier. In an attempt to teach Private Santiago a lesson, Jessep manipulates Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick into ordering Dawson and Downey to commit a Code Red on Santiago. Codes, manipulation, superiority, and morality all factor into their decision to carry out that fatal order. A similar scenario develops in the article, “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience,” where authors Herbert C Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton investigate whether or not Lieutenant William Calley was justified in organizing

and carrying out an order he says was given by his superior, Captain Ernest Medina. With nothing except the words of a few witnesses, solely Calley receives punishment for the murder of hundreds of innocent Vietnamese lives. Though he followed orders given to him, and the code by which the military expects its officers to follow, he is punished with a lifetime sentence. Different in dynamic, the article, “The Abu Ghraib Prison: Sources of Sadism,” author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak explores the facets and situational aspects that led to the abuse within a United States prison camp for Iraqi detainees. She lists three traits that led to this torture: “authorization, routinization, and dehumanization” (Szegedy-Maszak 76). In receiving an authoritative approval to abuse these prisoners, the U.S. soldiers were desensitized and eventually they were blinded as to the inhumanity in their actions. The movie A Few Good Men and the articles written by Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton and Marianne Szegedy-Maszak altogether share a common theme where a central authority figure gives a questionable order down the command chain, in which an individual or individuals struggle with an internal conflict between following morals and obeying codes.
In the decision to commit the Code Red on Santiago, Dawson and Downey were almost forced to do it because had they not obeyed orders, their records would be tarnished.

These soldiers were left in a situation where they really had no choice. It is this exact situation that fuels seemingly poor decisions made by officers in the military. The code that every soldier must follow dictates that when given an order, he or she must comply. At the time of another soldier’s Code Red, in which he was food deprived, Dawson disobeyed and snuck the man a meal. Setting up as a precursor to Dawson’s future actions, Jessep tarnishes his record without reasoning due to his disobedience. Having realized what happens when he fails to follow an order, Dawson ensures Kendrick’s Code Red ordered on Private Santiago is carried out. Similarly to the case of Dawson and Downey is the trouble that Lieutenant William Calley fell into during the My Lai Massacre. His decision to remain non-rebellious against his superior’s orders resulted in him alone being charged with what the court ruled to be murderous acts and not simply two men following orders. Hamilton and Kelman rebuttal Calley’s statement with, “You could be court-martialed for refusing an order and refusing an order in the face of the enemy, you could be sent to death, sir.” (136). According to the account by Calley, an officer who disregards his superior’s commands takes the chance of punishment for his actions; therefore, the dichotomy that Calley receives in his position promotes him following orders given to him if he could be so far as killed for disobeying. Though it seems unethical to murder hundreds of innocent Vietnamese townspeople, the position that Calley was placed in made it as though he had no choice at all. Similarly, Dawson and Downey, with the codes by which they must follow in the military and the laws they must abide by as U.S. citizens, are given a choice between two actions which condemn each other;

therefore, performing and not performing the Code Red will have the same consequence of punishment. Dawson simply chooses for both of them to obey their direct superior and avoid the same punishment he received in the past for disobedience.
Dawson and Downey, who simply did their job by following orders, were taken advantage of by officers higher up in the chain of command. Though Jessep claims, “we [soldiers] follow orders, or people die” (Reiner), he also protests that Dawson and Downey severed this code, which he advocates is unflawed, by acting out on their own in murdering Santiago. With the setup of the modern U.S. military class system, Jessep easily takes advantage of Dawson and Downey. Due to these two soldiers’ lack of documented evidence to prove that they did not plan to kill Private Santiago, Jessep simply had to ensure that a few flight records disappeared in order to remain safe from obtaining any blame in court. Identically to Dawson and Downey’s scenario, William Calley received the entire blame for the My Lai Massacre because no physically documented proof existed to prove that Captain Ernest Medina ordered him to carry out the vague order from Lieutenant Colonel Barker. Neither of these two superior officers needed to worry about becoming a suspect in the trial because the only evidence against them was a verbal account from a few of the men involved. In the same way, Jessep takes advantage of his subordinate soldiers Dawson and Downey because he knew that, with no evidence, he was safe from being convicted.
In the presence of an authority figure, people are blind to their immoral actions, where they can seemingly do anything, no matter how horrific that may be. Having been punished before by his superior, Dawson realizes that he cannot take the risk of tarnishing his record any further; therefore, he carries out the Code Red on Private Santiago without question. Similarly, author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak concludes from Milgram’s shock experiments that in the presence of a looming authority figure, “2 out of 3 of the unwitty students administered shocks that would have been lethal in real life” (Szegedy-Maszak 76). Szegedy-Maszak explains that when an authority figure gives his or her approval of the immoral actions that a person is committing, it makes the person overlook any moral boundary between them and performing the task ordered. Szegedy-Maszak explains that the process necessary for torture begins with authorization. In the film, simply because Dawson was authorized by Kendrick to perform the Code Red does not ensure that this order was moral.
Whether or not Dawson and Downey were wrong in following the orders they were given by the chain of command from Jessep, to Kendrick, and onto them, they followed the military code by which they were directly going to be punished for had they disobeyed. A conflict existed between the direct authority figure, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jessep, who gives orders and the indirect influence of the laws dictated by the United States government. Taking away the central authority figure as well as removing the military code from the situation may have produced a totally different outcome; however, in order to obey the codes and command chain that characterize the military, Dawson and Downey needed to disobey their morals and the laws that condemned them in court.