I Call Bullshit on the New York Times
This Sunday the New York Times cautioned us that there are: Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles. With meticulously researched charts and graphs the Times documented “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. It is important to know that the crimes occurred “after their return from war” so the reader will understand that it was the war that caused them to occur. The only problem is that in the 75 months since the first us soldier set foot in Afghanistan, there were over 90,000 other murders committed with no apparent connection to the conflict.
Given the meticulous detail with which the times researched this issue, it’s a bit surprising that they missed the fact that this means that the 1.7 million veterans of the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan commit murder at a much lower rate than the general population. Even using rough numbers it is easy enough to calculate that the rate for Iraq/Afghanistan vets is about 0.071/1000 while the rate for the general population (ages 15 through 64) is about 0.45/1000.
As noted, this is a very rough calculation that would probably not stand muster with professional statisticians, but it does give a good idea of how slanted this article actually is. Based on the real statistics — so carefully avoided in the Times article — it would appear that service in a combat zone makes people significantly less prone to criminal violence then staying home complaining about the war.
Somehow, I’m not really surprised by this.
Update: Ralph Peters in the New York Post also picked up on this story and called it what it is: SMEARING SOLDIERS. Peters also takes a closer look at the numbers than I did and calculates that the returning vets would have needed to commit “a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007″ to match the homicide rate of their peers at home.
Update: MichellMalkin.com also points to this article in the Weekly Standard that further demolishes the NYT’s piece.