Is This Really "Anti-troops"?

Something I posted on ROKDrop, a blog worth reading and a perspective worth knowing about. We disagree from time to time on some things, most recently on his recent piece on a New York Times piece I read last night, was very saddened by, but quite appreciated. Whether or not they got some things wrong, I don't think such journalism is "anti-troops."

My comment on the ROKDrop post in question:

Sure. Being Af-Am isn't actually a reasonable "cause" for troubles back home, and the rates of bad things happening amongst people with PTSD seems to be higher, and the incidents caused by the violence and stress of being in action.

And to be fair, the NYT reporters were very clear from the jump about the context they wanted to be taken in, the fact that their research for the story was not scientific nor exhaustive, as well as the fact that they went to great lengths to interview talking heads who point out that PTSD is one of many factors that lead to problems back home, but to say PTSD is not worth looking at unto itself is a problem, especially given the stigma that exists about the subject even (and especially) within the military itself.

One might disagree with aspects of their take on the story, but that article struck me as honest – certainly not "anti-troops."

And major newspapers (The Washington Post is a recent example, in their series on black men) and the print publishing media has done a great deal of good, responsible work on the problems endemic to certain parts of the black community (black men in particular), and dealt with the problem of violence and drugs in particular.

I don't and didn't have a problem with that being pointed out, as long as it's done responsibly and with an eye to context, as I think the NYT story was.

Combined with a very good story done by NPR recently on PTSD, involving both a civilian and official Army psychologist, veteran representatives, vets from Vietnam and Iraq, which looked at the complex issues involved in coming home and the difficulties in getting help sometimes, or identifying the problem, I don't think the so-called "liberal" media is troop bashing at ALL, but on the contrary, taking a nuanced take through good journalism on a difficult and emotional subject.

Kudos for the NYT tackling this issue. When I read this as a civvie leftie, I didn't think "damn troops!" but I sympathized with the hell that soldiers are going through in war. And I really think most of the readers of the NYT are with me on that, since that's the spirit in which this is written, tone, context – all of that.

If any criticism is being leveled in the direction of the "military" it's for failing to recognize the problem and help its soldiers get treatment, as expressed through pending suits against the government, not just the NYT's alleged agenda or hatred of "troops." I think this is real news, and an issue worth looking at, just as the Walter Reid issue is and was.

This kind of journalism is about as "anti-troops" as saying that a failing health care system is "anti-patient" or pointing out the collapse of public education as "anti-student."

I don't find the content, tone, or context of these articles "anti-troop" at all. I think, as a self-avowed right-of-center guy and as a member of the military yourself, you might just be taking this in much more of a sensitive way than need be, which is understandable, given the emotions running high about this war.

Still, I maintain that it has become quite politically possible to be anti-war and have no animosity towards "the troops" and in fact, anti-war protest has always been such, even and especially in Vietnam. Even the ever-present spectre of the "spitting on troops" image is quite overblown, as peace/anti-war/free speech activists in the late 1960's worked quite closely with veteran groups against the war. A man I heard on NPR, and a book I want to read and has been quite talked about: The Spitting Image

He makes a very compelling case that even the "fact" of troops being spit upon as a rule back in Vietnam is mostly a media creation and more of a function of post-Vietnam war movies than something grounded in reality, or much more than urban myth amongst vets who did in fact face some negativity towards them, but rarely, if any spitting or other pattern of obvious derision.

Personally, I think the "anti-troops" myth right now is a big one, because I don't know anyone on my side of the fence who has anything against soldiers, and this includes activists and other active anti-war people. Just like the NYT piece, whenever a liberal speaks out against the war, or against even one of the government's institutions in the NAME of saving American lives and getting our men and women 1) back home, 2) the proper equipment, as in criticizing Rumsfeld for not getting the proper armor on Humvees, or 3) help and treatment upon returning from war - we get slapped with this "anti-troops" thing and dismissed as disrespecting men and women in uniform.

I don't believe this is happening, nor is that the intent. And I just wanted to extend that to the present NYT piece as well. I think some very good and helpful work is being done to help soldiers. And as a person with family members presently in the military, as well as a father, uncle, and other family members 20 years retired, I am certainly not "anti-troops." And one of the reasons my Dad got such good hospice care in his fight against colon cancer (lost in 2001) was because he lived near the UMich hospital and was able to receive care through them, as opposed to the Dayton, OH VA hospital that I wouldn't want to wish on anyone fighting for their lives in a hospital bed. Which is where the heart of the Walter Reed reporting was, and where I think – for what it's worth – is where the heart of the present NYT article is.

That's where I'm coming from, in any case. I just think it's kind of a cheap shot to lump everything critical of the war or the military as "anti-troops" when there's much more complexity and carefulness than you imply here.

Comments

[GI]

If the NY Times was not anti-troops than why did they inflate their statistics and provide no context of the reporting? If the NY Times did an article about the homicide rate on a particular ethnic group and included people acquitted of crimes and killing someone from drag racing as part of their homicides statistics I can guarantee their would be many people in the ethnic group offended by it. Especially if the article included no statistics to show that the ethnic group was in fact less likely to commit a killing when compared to the general population. Why did the NY Times leave it out? It was clearly a hit piece.

If there are so many GIs going nuts and killing people why the need to inflate the statistics? Maybe it is because there isn’t a whole lot of GIs going out and killing people like the statistics show isn’t true. The perception is being driven by the media like the NY Times and defense lawyers who tell their clients to claim PTSD every time they get in trouble. That is why I say how do you know the guy that committed a crime wasn’t a mail clerk for a year in Iraq but is claiming PTSD to get off.

I already said that the military at first did not handle the PTSD issue well but like with everything I have ever seen with the military it identifies problems and begins creating systems to deal with them. When I came back from Iraq from OIF1 the mental health guy gave us a questionaire about PTSD which we all filled out. We then received endless lectures and briefings about beating our wives, drunk driving, chaplain brifing etc that would over lap things that should be discussed in a more extensive PTSD check. In my opinion the training was adequate and has only gotten better today.

Now the military actually has programs to enroll people into extensive two week in house treatment at the hospital which I did with one of my soldiers who had PTSD after coming back from Afghanistan. It helped him a lot. This was something not available after OIF1 that is now. The military has been working hard to tackle the PTSD problem which was no way conveyed in the article. Plus something else to remember is that the military cannot make ex-GIs go to counseling like it can active duty soldiers.

The whole Walter Reed reporting was sensationalized and had nothing to do with funding by the way and everything to do with leadership in that part of the hospital which a lot of people were relieved for. Walter Reid is quality hospital. The VA hospitals on the otherhand are a mess and that does have everything to do with funding which is not the military’s problem but Congress. Congress has been horrible in properly funding the VA for years.

Also I did not say everyone critical of the war is anti-troops, I said the NY Times is anti-troops which is clearly the case.

If the New York Times simply wrote a story about the soldiers with problems with PTSD I would have no problem with it. When they have to inflate and sensationalize statistics to claim troops are going crazy and killing people left and right makes the NY Times no different then the Korean media that likes to create perceptions about English teachers in the same way.

[J.J. Hunsecker]

I'm going to have to agree with Mr. Hurt here. I too read the Times' article and even if they did inflate statistics it's still a stretch to say that the writers were displaying an "anti-troop bias". The overall tone of it simply doesn't jibe with GI's assertions. And as I recall, the piece said upfront that the methodology was far from perfect.

To quote:

"The Pentagon doesn't keep track of such killings, most of which are prosecuted not by the military justice system but by civilian courts in state after state. Neither does the Justice Department.

To compile and analyze the list, The Times conducted a search of local news reports, examined police, court and military records and interviewed the defendants, their lawyers, their families and military and law enforcement officials.

[J.J. Hunsecker]

I'm going to have to agree with Mr. Hurt here. I too read the Times' article and even if they did inflate statistics it's still a stretch to say that the writers were displaying an "anti-troop bias". The overall tone of it simply doesn't jibe with GI's assertions. And as I recall, the piece said upfront that the methodology was far from perfect.

To quote:

"This reporting most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings, especially in big city and on military bases, are reported publicly or in detail. Also, it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homocide charges"

If anything, I found the Times piece to be more patronizing than actually "anti-troop". Probably because so few members of America's elite institutions such as the New York Times have served in uniform, there's a tendency to exoticize those who have or are currently enlisted. And there are two ways that this is done. One way simply showers the troops with effusive and mawkish praise. The troops according to this way become the paragons of virtue, bravery and ethical rectitude. The second way(and the Times' piece was part-in-parcel of this) simply sees the man-in-arms as the eternal lachrymose victim. As simply another cog in a heartless and ruthless machine. Which ever of the two ways of exoticizing you like the result is the same: the soldier is seen as anything but human.

If you want really good reporting about the military, then I suggest that you pick some of the writings of Robert D. Kaplan. He's a correspondent with The Atlantic Monthly who in the past couple years has published two outstanding books on the modern U.S. military: "Imperial Grunts" and "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts". Both books are superb in that Kaplan writes about what he's actually seeing, not filtering his observations through some pre-conceived notions. While I can't remember the quote off-hand, Kaplan says that the best way to report on the military is not to ask how they're feeling but rather to ask them what it is that they do.

[GI]

If the statistics are not perfect then why include them? If the statistics are not important than why greatly inflate them? It obvious they included them in order to insinuate that there is some kind of pattern of GIs going nuts and killing people because of the war. How else do you explain this quote from the NY Times:

"Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."

Substitute a minority group to fit a paragraph like that you would have outrage.

They are clearly trying to insinuate a pattern and using manipulated statistics to do this. How anyone cannot see this is beyond me. The manipulated statistics had no place in this article. Now due to their disinformation this story is being picked up overseas with headlines "Rise in Homicides by US Vets":

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/13/2137385.htm

If the article did not have the manipulated statistics there would be no headlines about "Rise in Homicides by US Vets". Notice how the linked article focused on nothing but the manipulated statistics and not any of the actual troop stories in the article. This is clearly what the NY Times wanted people to focus on not the troop stories.

If the manipulated statistics were not in the article I would not even blogged about it and would just as noted the article as just another liberal media the troops are victims of the Bushitlerhaliburton War piece.

I also think it is important to realize we are professionals doing a dangerous job and want to be respected for doing it just like police and fire fighters are respected for doing the dangerous jobs they do. Servicemembers don't want your sympathy, they want your respect which the NY Times article clearly lacks.

Another side note, J.J. comments about Kaplan are spot on and why many of the anti-war types can't stand him. He has probably spent more time imbedded with US troops than anyone other than maybe Michael Yon. He knows what he is talking about.

[J.J. Hunsecker]

"If the statistics are not perfect then why include them? If the statistics are not important than why greatly inflate them?"

Probably because if the Times piece didn't include any statistics somebody would come along and say that the entire thing was a stringing together of individual anecdotes with no empirical data to back it up. Either way the Times lose and its critics get to take their potshots.

Listen, the article was far from perfect and probably didn't deserve the amount of space that it received. That being said, I think anybody-whether right-wing, left-wing, pro-war, anti-war-has to concede that the researchers at the Times unearthed a significant number of individual cases that illustrate something is not A-okay with returning troops from Iraq.

[GI]

If they didn't include the statistics I already said I would have hardly paid noticed to it and the international news media would not be running headlines about killer veterans running amok in the states.

Plus look at the timing. You think it was just a coincidence they released this story on the front page after the sensational journalism from the Camp Lejeune Marine case?

If the number is so significant why did they inflate it with people killed in car racing, people acquitted of the crime, people with prior mental problems, and people who killed someone in self defense. They even included a guy that severely injured his infant son before he deployed who died later from the injuries as part of their tally.

Could it be they inflated the number because the number they came up with was not significant and shocking enough for the front page?

I looked through every one of the 121 cases very few of them could be verifiably traced to PTSD. PTSD is problem being sensationalized by the NY Times for clear reasons.

[Korea Beat]

The statistics in the article are bad but I think that is attributable to stupidity rather than malice. The media in general do not do a good job of writing articles like this which depend on having at least a minimal understanding of statistics.

These are two good posts related to the article and its stats, such as they are.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/suckers_for_a_good_story.php

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/support_our_troops.php

[GI]

Korea Beat,

The second link is a pretty good read but I am still convinced this is deliberate because of the timing of the article that was released after the Marine murder case in North Carolina and the fact they had to inflate statistics. Why else include in their homicide stat a guy who injured his infant son before he deployed and then after he returns the baby dies from its injuries?

There are so many cases in their statistic that has nothing to do with PTSD or Iraq/Afghanistan service that I see no other reason than it was an intentional smear at US servicemembers.

If the NY Times really supports the troops when are they going to do a front page article about servicemembers who returned from Iraq/Afghanistan and felt service made them better citizens and then went on to lead productive, successful careers like the vast, vast majority of servicemembers do? This is one statistic they actually wouldn't need to inflate and manipulate.

[J.J. Hunsecker]

"...I am still convinced this is deliberate because of the timing of the article was released after the Marine murder case in North Carolina and the fact they had to inflate statistics."

Christ Almighty GI!!! So what if the two stories came out around the same time? That's more a COINCIDENCE rather than conclusive evidence of a conspiracy by the media establishment to smear U.S. soldiers. In case you don't remember, the Times article was a 7,000 world article that was researched (however badly) and written and prepared over a considerable period of time BEFORE the incident with the Marine in North Carolina. Think about it logically: do you really think that the Times reporters, researchers, and editors were able, within a very short time period, to comb through 120+ cases about murders committed by service men, interview a battery of experts, write successive drafts of a massive article, fact check, and then print said massive article to synchronize it with the Marine murder case?

If I may advance an opinion with out sounding "anti-troop", I think your being way too sensitive and paranoid.

In his January 16 op/ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, John McWhorter wrote about some of the fierce, hostile and yet misplaced reactions some African-American supporters of Barack Obama were having about statements Hillary Clinton had made about Martin Luther King, LBJ, and the Civil Rights Movement. McWhorter writes: "There is a willful frailty, a lack of self-confidence, in this kind of thinking. It suggest someone almost searching for things to claim injury about, donning the mantle of the noble victim to assuage a bruised ego."

Reading that, I can't help be "convinced this is deliberate because of the timing" with somebody else's "willful frailty" and desire to "assuage a bruised ego."

[GI]

They didn't just write the article when the Marine murder incident happened. It took a long time to write and they have been sitting on it waiting for the right time to release it for maximum impact which was when the Marine murder incident happened.

You still haven't been able to explain why the statistics were intentionally inflated and given no context whatsoever. Sounds a whole lot more than a coincidence to me.

I will also repeat, this story would hardly have drawn any notice from me if it wasn't for the manipulated and inaccurate statistics that were consequently spread across the international media further spreading a smear against veterans which is how I first found out about the NY Times article in the first place.

[The Metropolitician]

To their credit, the NYT has published a link to responses to their article on their front page. Perhaps the debate might be best taken to the source, where more people can read about it and benefit from it? Also, you might get some questions answered, straight from the proverbial horse's mouth.

[J.J. Hunsecker]

"They didn't just write the article when the Marine murder incident happend. It took a long time to write and THEY HAVE BEEN SITTING ON IT WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME TO RELEASE IT FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT WHICH WAS WHEN THE MARINE MURDER INCIDENT HAPPEND."

Right. So the Times wrote this article all the while knowing that a heinous murder was going to occur on a Marine camp in North Carolina. Omniscience is one thing, but your charges against the Times is in an entirely different league. Which is ironic, this is the same all-powerful, all-knowing outfit that got hustled by Jayson Blair and ended up having to eat crow.

I suggest reading Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", I think you'll learn a lot from it.

Moreover GI, other than your mere assertion, what concrete, irrefutable-documentary or oral-evidence do you have that the times wrote this article, sat on it, and then published it with the intent to have in coincide with the Marine murder incident? Let me save you the trouble: NONE.

As for the statistics, well they're just that statistics: a useful but hardly accurate or a panacea. According to your logic, if there's any statistical flimflammery there must be a conspiracy to smear or obfuscate. Fact is, there are many, many instances when statistics fail to describe and contextualize a host of problems and issue.

Take for instance the jobs statistics put out by the Department of Labor. There a host of ways to measure job creation and loss and in turn a plethora of conclusions can result. For example, you can measure jobs by sending a out a survey to sixty thousand households across the country to measure employment. Or you can survey four thousand business and government establishments. I don't think it takes a mathematical genius to figure out that by measuring two different entities the likelihood of getting two different results is highly probable. However, that doesn't make one right or the other wrong. Nor does it indicate that the Labor Department is intentionally trying to pull a fast one on the American public. Both, individually offer their own different snapshots.

The statistics provided by the Times most likely have their flaws. But whose to say that yours don't either. Neither you nor the Times had access to all data delineating felony crimes perpetrated by returning veterans from Iraq. You both had to pick and choose your sample. Yours and the Times' statistical conclusions are probably both equally wrong and right. It just a matter of where you looked and how you defined your terms.

Anyways, that's all I'm going to say about the matter. It's Mr. Hurt's blog and it's bordering on the outre to be having our own tit-for-tat on his forum. I'll let you have the last word GI.