The NYT today used 6200 words in 140 paragraphs to make the point that War is Hell — but the newspaper failed utterly in the particulars of its argument, the gist of which was this:

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.

Assuming that half a million Americans have served in and around Afghanistan and Iraq in the last five years (340,000 or so were deployed in 2003), the murder rate would be about 11 per 100,000 annually. This compares with a murder rate in the US overall of 27 per 100,000 for the relevant age group.

So the murder rate for servicemen, some of whom no doubt have been severely impacted by the stresses of combat, appears to be actually less than among their civilian cohort. Powerline makes the additional point that this continues to be true, even after adjusting for male/female differences in murder rates.

There is no purpose served by a fatuous hit piece like this. Even if it were true that war produced higher murder rates among ex-servicemen, so what? Must the US then abstain from military activities? Should we have not fought in wars from the Revolution through the Civil War and World Wars I and II?

We note that the Times produced a similarly gratuitous anti-military hit piece like this last year — this year’s piece argues that those coming out of the military are criminals; last year’s piece argued that those going into the military were criminals. Hard for the military to catch a break from the New York Times.

UPDATE

The rate is far lower if the figure of 1.6 million servicemen is correct.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 5:08 pm and is filed under General, MSM, War, idiots!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.