Soldiers began dehumanizing Iraqi civilians through routine checkpoint humiliations

Evidence

Dehumanization also operates at a broader social level. Among the reasons that Iraq veterans gave for opposing the war in Iraq was that it changed soldiers to the point where they began dehumanizing the Iraqi people (Hedges & Al-Arian, 2007). They did so by degrading and humiliating people at checkpoints, during raids on their homes, and in other aspects of their daily lives. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2418

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The ‘brutalization’ of soldiers — war changing perpetrators’ moral sensibilities — parallels discussions of moral injury and the long-term psychological cost veterans carry.

Related

• Dehumanizing enemies can change soldiers until they dehumanize entire civilian populations. (similarity 0.95)
• Dehumanizing enemies as vermin reduces the guilt of killing them (similarity 0.78)