Not just murderers, they’re homeless too
The other day the NYT slandered the military, suggesting that returning veterans were disproportionately to become murderers, when precisely the opposite is true, as various statistics show, and as we discussed in some detail. Now AP joins the anti-military or anti-American chorus, asserting or implying that war causes homelessness among veterans:
Why does Johnny come marching homeless?…How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars? What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?…
most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens. Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers. For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified…
The homeless advocacy group that the AP story uses for its statistics says that there are on average of 3 million Americans who are homeless at some point in a given year, about 1% of the country. If 1500 recent veterans are among the homeless, that equates to something like 0.1-0.2% of the relevant population — far less than the national average calculated by the advocacy group. And this holds true even if the advocacy group is substantially overstating the problem of homelessness in the US.
So, just like the New York Times, the Associated Press gets the story precisely 180 degrees wrong. The story once again should be about how well the men and women of the armed forces do, not how poorly. But there’s as much chance of seeing such positive stories about America’s veterans as there is of seeing this tremendous military success trumpeted by our media.