General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What is your favorite rationalization for the U.S. drone killings of civilian non-combatants? [View all]coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)the deaths of civilians in these anonymous drone strikes, are the justifications ('rationalizations') used to justify them.
In reading Greenwald's latest piece on the Authoritarian Mind, I was reminded of those experiments Stanley Milgram conducted in the 1950s at Stanford where subjects who thought they were acting in the name of 'science' were only too willing to administer what they thought were near-lethal and, in a couple cases, lethal bursts of electric shock to innocent people, provided the white-coated 'scientists' designated those innocents as needing the shocks.
Milgram's point is that almost anyone can be convinced to condone and even commit torture or murder, provided they think they are doing so on behalf of a legitimate authority (science, government, corporations, etc.).