Why Do Marines Obey Orders In A Few Good Men

Many war-criminals claimed that they were merely following orders and could not be held responsible for their actions, in the trials following the World War II. The United States Military discipline and effectiveness is built on the foundation of obedience to orders. Recruits are taught to obey, immediately and without question, orders from their superiors. One movie that challenges the question of why marines obey their supervisors’ orders without ambivalent is Rob Reiner’s motion picture, A Few Good Men.

In A Few Good Men, two marines are put on trial for the death of a member of their squad, which they simply followed the orders given for a “Code Red”. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist conducted one of the classic studies on obedience during 1960s that

demonstrated surprising results. The Stanley Milgram’s experiment, “The Perils Of Obedience” aimed at getting an answer to the question: For how long will someone continue to give shocks to another person if they are told to do so, even if they thought they could be seriously hurt? As the Milgram obedience experiments, the psychologist, Philip Zimbardo’s “The Stanford Prison Experiment” raises troubling questions about the ability of individuals to resist authoritarian or obedient roles. In both, we can observe individuals struggling to maintain their dignity, morality, obedience and autonomy against the situational power of an authority figure. Because of two Marines are brought into situation where obedience is expected, Dawson and Downey carry out the Code Red with no questions asked.
The film illustrates a story about a navy lawyer, Daniel Kaffee, who is assigned to defend two marines, Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey, who are accused of the murder of fellow colleague William Santiago. The marines claim that they were only following orders, end up leading to perform an illegal act, which requires them to assault a fellow marine. Seems like pretty good motivation to obey any order but the unlawful order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it.
Milgram starts out his article by stating that, “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to”(Milgram 78). All communal living requires a system of authority. As Milgram finds that obedience is so deeply ingrained that can override training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct. Throught a series of experiment to test people’s willingness to submit to authority, Stanley Milgram determines that average people choose to obedient to an authority figure even if their actions are not causing another human being pain. The results of the experiments lead to the loss of personal responsibility.
In the film, when Dawson was asked about the case, he carry out the illegal act in loyalty of his positions. He wouldn’t want to dishonor his unit, corps which he’d accepted whatever punishment they will give. He believes he did right by following the orders. Downey and Dawson was behaving in a way that they thought was required, rather than using their own judgement and morals. In fact, “I was only following orders”, has been unsuccessfully used as a legal defense in this case. The court held that the two marines “act at their own peril” when obeying orders when such orders are illegal.
Both studies show lessons about authority; the obedience research question authority when it is excessive and unjust. When Santiago died, Colonel Jessup covers his back, and tries to let the marines solely take responsible for the death. The goodness of Every individual can be transformed and overwhelmed by an accumulation of small forces of evil. In the article, “The Stanford Prison Experiment”, Zimbardo was trying to show what happened when all of the individuality and dignity was stripped away from a human, and their life was completely controlled. In the movie, Colonel Jessup shows as the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that happened immersed in such a situation.
The lawyer, Kaffee, of the men accused, goads Jessup into admitting on the stand that he did order the Code Red.

Dawson and Downey are cleared of the charge, but are given a dishonorable discharge from the marines. When Downey asked what did he do wrong, Dawson simply stated, “Yeah we did. We were supposed to fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willy.” It’s clear, under military law, that military members can be held accountable for crimes committed under the guise of “obeying orders,” and there is no requirement to obey orders which are unlawful.

During the Stanley Milgram Experiment, many subjects were uncomfortable doing the shock, all 40 subjects obeyed up to 300 volts. If the subject asked who was responsible if anything happen to the learner, the experimenter answered “I am responsible”. This gave the subjects a relief and many continued, and making it more authoritarian for each time the subject contacted the experimenter. Zimbardo, on the other hand, believes that social and ideological factors determined how both guards and prisoners behaved, with individuals acting in a way that they thought was required, rather than using their own

judgement.
In Milgram’s experiment, 65% never stopped giving shocks. None stopped when the learner said he had heart trouble. We believe that it has to do with our almost innate behavior that we should do as told, especially from authority persons. Zimbardo has acknowledged that the experiment appeared to show how subjects reacted to the specific needs of the situation rather than referring to their own internal morals and beliefs. Each of these experiments raised awareness of the need for more careful institutionalized analyses of research proposals based on a fuller appreciation of their potential pain to participants relative to gain accrued to science and society.