Looking on the Dark Side

The New York Times published an exposé on Sunday, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles."

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.

...The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower.

The Pentagon was given The Times’s roster of homicides. It declined to comment because, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, said, the Department of Defense could not duplicate the newspaper’s research. Further, Colonel Melnyk questioned the validity of comparing prewar and wartime numbers based on news media reports, saying that the current increase might be explained by “an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.” He also questioned the value of “lumping together different crimes such as involuntary manslaughter with first-degree homicide.”

Given that many veterans rebound successfully from their war experiences and some flourish as a result of them, veterans groups have long deplored the attention paid to the minority of soldiers who fail to readjust to civilian life.

...Clearly, committing homicide is an extreme manifestation of dysfunction for returning veterans, many of whom struggle in quieter ways, with crumbling marriages, mounting debt, deepening alcohol dependence or more-minor tangles with the law.

But these killings provide a kind of echo sounding for the profound depths to which some veterans have fallen, whether at the bottom of a downward spiral or in a sudden burst of violence.

The Times always does its best to highlight the dark side of the war.

Of course, I question the outlet's research and the results.

I don't mean to diminish the significance of the 121 deaths, but it does appear that an effort was made to inflate the figures by lumping together crimes like "involuntary manslaughter with first-degree homicide." Morever, as Colonel Melnyk rightly points out, it's possible that in the past a perpetrator's military service wasn't noted in media reports of crimes.

To further its cause, The Times cites that the American homicide rate has been on the decrease on average as proof that there's a causal relationship between service in Iraq and Afghanistan and violent crimes by veterans. That's a leap.

An average can be misleading. The Times shouldn't over-look the fact that there are areas in the U.S. where violent crime has ballooned.

How many of the homicides in the Milwaukee area were committed by vets of Iraq and Afghanistan? Certainly, the rash of homicides committed by teenagers aren't connected to service in the war. In short, acts of violence in some areas of the country have nothing to do with previous service in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Bottom line: The Times' research is flawed. It's designed to present a picture that advances its anti-war, anti-Bush administration agenda. It's propaganda.

It is interesting that the report was published at a time when news of remarkable progress is coming out of Iraq.

Pete Hegseth has an enlightening piece, "Death Blow to Defeatists," that details the success.

Hegseth writes:

[F]or the past six months — because of General Petraeus’s new counter-insurgency strategy and the courage of 165,000 Americans — Iraqis have seen hope (one might even say “audacious hope”), and they have responded. Bolstered by American commitment, and weary of al-Qaeda brutality, the Iraqi people — Sunni and Shia together in many areas — have started cooperating at the local level.

As a result, violence continues to plummet, with attacks throughout Iraq down 60 percent since June and civilian deaths down 75 percent from a year ago. Iraqis are returning home by the tens of thousands. The incoming flow of foreign fighters have been cut in half. And despite a “surge” of troops, American combat deaths are near all-time monthly lows in Iraq. This is all wonderful news.

All the while, the Defeat-o-cratic leadership in Congress (Reid, Pelosi, & co.) and the Defeat-o-cratic presidential candidates have done everything they can to deny — obvious — progress.

With violence down in Iraq, it's not surprising that the libs have shifted the emphasis to post-war violence involving vets in the U.S.

What else can they do at this point?