The best behaved military in history

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.

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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-martials 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-martials in the military and a further 1,805 thefts, many of which would have resulted in special court-martials.

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

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What we are finding from the few court martials that have arisen is a much more nuanced situation than the media accounts about the alleged crimes. this has been particularly so in teh sensationalized case involving actions of Marines in Haditha. Peters article is a much needed counter weight to the demonizing of our troops that has slipped into the conversation about the war, by the anti war pukes who want to lose the war.