Abu Ghraib, Auschwitz and Mumbai

I am presenting a guest blog from Keith Rice which reflects on current events in Mumbai from a spiral perspective. As the greater Middle East ist the theme this is useful analysis about the large connectivity of dysfunct vmemetic patterns. Which move as much in time as in geospace.  And adresses strategic imagination for securing pre-blue trouble spots worldwide. As much in Cities, Communities, Countries and Cultures.

These thoughts are essential for any foreign policy unit on earth which is worth the money. See also this complimentary. as I perceive it -snapshot from Pentagon Insider Thomas PM Barnett:

On the Motives in Mumbai

"While India is no stranger to such terror (indeed, it can claim to have endured more experience in this regard than any other great power over the last quarter-century, with no other even coming close), these attacks seem to signal a new era for the nation: like a China, India becomes increasingly targeted for its role in embracing and spreading globalization. Thus its need to have a globally conscious and responsible military--meaning an end to the strategic myopia over Jammu & Kashmir."

Abu Ghraib, Auschwitz and Mumbai



Keith E Rice's Blog

Random Thoughts of a SocioPsychologist -
 
http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/


Abu Ghraib, Auschwitz and Mumbai
Posted by keith at 5:17 pm, November 28th 2008.
It is, of course, decidedly early to pronounce on just who is behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai; but it is almost certainly radical Islamists of one persuasion or another. One senior Indian military officer has claimed that the attackers came from Pakistan - yet one of the gunmen in the Oberoi Trident Hotel managed to get hooked up to a TV channel and told them he was from the 'Deccan Mujahedeen', a (previously-unknown) group of Indian Muslim extremists.


Given the marginally-improved state of the usually-hostile/often-verging-on-war relations between India and Pakistan, one might almost be forgiven for hoping it was an internal Indian operation that could not so easily be a catalyst for open military confrontation between the two nuclear powers. However, in light of the Hindu orgies of violence against Muslim communities which have followed previous Islamist terrorist incidents on Indian soil, thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths might prove equally unpalatable.

 

Where ever the attackers originated from, few will be surprised if they didn't have at least tacit assistance from radicals in Pakistan. And few will surprised, given the sophisticated level of organisation in the Mumbai attacks, if the hand of al-Qaeda isn't  to be found somewhere in the pulling of the strings.


What makes people so willing to do such dreadful things to other people?

As part of teaching a new specification to my A-Level Psychology students, we've been looking at the notorious Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandals of 2003-2004. (See the Blog entry, ‘Prisoner abuse and the mess in Iraq') To the credit of the new specification, it attempts to apply psychological theory to ‘real life' situations - in this case Stanley Milgram's Agency Theory and Henri Tajfel's Social Identity Theory to Abu Ghraib.


It was as we were discussing the application of Tajfel's ideas that I had what Abraham Maslow would have called a ‘peak experience' - though a rather chilling one! Tajfel's proposition was that, simply by categorising people into different groups, you predispose those groups to inter-group conflict. We looked at how the American guards at Abu Ghraib saw themselves as the in-group - the ‘good guys', self-sacrificing liberators, democrats, Christians, sophisticated, trouser-wearers - while the Iraqi prisoners were the out-group - ‘bad guys', terrorists, tribesmen, Muslims, primitive, dress-wearers. Etc. Etc. Etc.  One of the students commented: "The Americans must have seen the Iraqis as that much further down the evolutionary chain!" And then it struck me: This isn't that far from how the Nazis made the Jews out to be such an inferior - yet dangerous! - species and so paved the way for a kind of tacit acceptance of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps from many Germans.

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