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Military Criminals or; the best behaved population in history?
Topic Started: Aug 13 2007, 01:52 PM (239 Views)
Condor
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Feel free to pass this on to any liberal friends that you may have:

New York Post
August 3, 2007
Troops And Crimes - History's best-behaved military
By Ralph Peters

The media love to trash our troops. Every crime alleged to have been
committed by a soldier or Marine in Iraq is headlined until it seems
that those in uniform are so busy with atrocities they haven't got time
to fight.

No accusation is too preposterous for "respected" media outlets to
feature, and the left-wing press convicts our troops long before they
see a courtroom. Our service members are portrayed (by those who never
served) as a sadistic rabble.

But when you look at the facts - the hard numbers - a very different
picture emerges.

While crimes committed by our troops can't be condoned (and they
certainly aren't), official crime statistics make it clear that we have
the best-behaved military in history - one that's vastly more
law-abiding than our general population.

The here-at-home numbers are readily available from public sources. So
let's compare some domestic crime rates with the misdeeds of those
vicious storm-troopers of ours.

In the 19-month period - over a year and a half - from Jan. 1, 2006
until the morning you read this, misbehavior by our troops resulted in a
total of 59 scheduled court-martials in Iraq - 21 of them general
court-martials, which are reserved for the most-serious crimes (murder,
rape, robbery, assault, arson and so forth). The other 38 were special
court-martials, invoked for lesser offenses, such as disciplinary
infractions or petty theft.

OK: 59 trials in 19 months, among an average troop population of almost
140,000. Compare that to civilian crime statistics back home, and it's
clear that any of us would welcome the chance to live among such model
citizens - even though our troops are overwhelmingly within the age
window where criminal behavior is most frequent.

Start with a city that Money magazine rated as "one of the 10 best
places to live" in the United States: Ann Arbor, Mich. Home to a great
university, the town has a population of about 113,300 - about 20,000
lower than our pre-surge troop numbers in Iraq.

In 2005 (the last year for which statistics are available), that ideal
place to live recorded 1,476 crimes that, if committed by a soldier,
would have required a general court-martial - plus a further 2,282
thefts and similar infractions that, depending on the details, would
have been handled by either a general or a special court-martial.

Twelve months in Ann Arbor, 3,758 court-martial-equivalent trials. If
all the crimes had been taken to court, which one doubts. Nineteen
months in Iraq, under the complex stresses of combat? Fifty-nine
court-martials. Guess that bastion of ethical liberalism in Michigan
needs to go through basic training.

But let's give peace a chance: The most dogmatically left-wing city in
the United States is undoubtedly (the People's Republic of) Santa Cruz,
Calif. With a population of some 55,000 - about a third of our current
troop numbers in Iraq - Santa Cruz, where the Age of Aquarius reigns,
had 503 violent crimes in 2004 (the latest statistics available) and a
total of 3,665 crimes that would qualify for court-martial's.

Extrapolate those numbers to match our current troop strength, and you'd
have a requirement for more than 10,000 court-martial equivalents. If
Santa Cruz were as serious about punishing its criminals as our military
is . . .

The military doesn't do warnings and probation. If a soldier does the
crime, he or she will do the time or pay the other relevant penalty -
court-martial's directly reflect the number of crimes committed. That
means that our troops in a combat zone have had less than 1 percent of
the crime rate in Santa Cruz - whose City Council in 2003 was proud to
be the first in the United States to adopt a resolution denouncing the
war in Iraq.

Nor are these hotbeds of peace, love and shirked responsibility alone in
being criminal empires compared to the good order prevailing in our
military. Take a genuinely decent American city, Lynchburg, VA., with a
strong religious tradition, 11 colleges, universities and technical
schools and a population in 2006 of 67,720 (about half the pre-surge
number of troops in Iraq).

In 2005, Lynchburg suffered 857 criminal acts that would've demanded
general court-martial's in the military and a further 1,805 thefts, many
of which would have resulted in special court-martial's.

Yet Lynchburg is particularly well-behaved. The stats for many cities
are far worse.

Now set those facts against the hypocrisy of so many in the media toward
our men and women in uniform. Did any of the reporters wailing about the
deplorable behavior of our troops in a half-dozen incidents over four
years bother to put those crimes into perspective?

Our troops are performing remarkably well under difficult conditions,
and our military does a solid job of screening out sociopath's. But,
inevitably, some slip through (the private-for-life who recently conned
The New Republic might qualify). And it's the one scum bag among 10,000
honorable men and women in uniform who gets the press attention.

Of course, we rightly demand model standards of behavior from our
troops, as we do from law-enforcement agents and officers. And today's
U.S. armed forces deliver, taking good order and discipline very
seriously. We all should be proud of how selflessly and honorably our
troops have served as the jackals on the home tear at the military's
carcass.

I learned an important lesson myself in digging out these statistics: I
knew, of course, how decent our troops are. I served with them for
almost 22 years (and testified at two court-martial's in two decades).

But on future trips to California - my favorite foreign country - I'll
be sure to give Santa Cruz a wide berth.

I'd hate to be the victim of an atrocity.

Ralph Peters is the author of the new book "Wars of Blood and Faith: The
Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century."
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