A Fictional World

Mark Steyn takes his turn at eviscerating the New York Times' dreadful smear job of returning veterans. That series tried to paint returning veterans as time bombs just waiting to kill innocent Americans. Never mind that statistically, the "killing rate" for returning veterans is quite a lot lower than in the general population. Never mind that you are at significantly greater risk of being killed by someone who has never served in any branch of the military. In the completely fictional world the Times operates in, all returning soldiers are defective and to be feared. Steyn wonders who is really in need of psychotherapy.

Obviously, as America's "newspaper of record," the Times would resent any suggestion that it's anti-military. I'm sure if you were one of these crazed military stalker whackjobs following the reporters home you'd find their cars sporting the patriotic bumper sticker "We Support Our Troops, Even After They've Been Convicted." As usual, the Times stories are written in the fey, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone that's a shoo-in come Pulitzer time:

"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."

"Patchwork picture," "quiet phenomenon."… Yes, yes, but exactly how quiet is the phenomenon? How patchy is the picture? The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan either "committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one." The "committed a killing" formulation includes car accidents.

Thus, with declining deaths in the war zones, the media narrative evolves. Old story: "America's soldiers are being cut down by violent irrational insurgents we can never hope to understand." New story: "Americans are being cut down by violent irrational soldiers we can never hope to understand." In the quagmire of these veterans' minds, every leafy Connecticut subdivision is Fallujah and every Dunkin' Donuts clerk an Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

It was the work of minutes for the Powerline Web site's John Hinderaker to discover that the "quiet phenomenon" is entirely unphenomenal: It didn't seem to occur to the Times to check whether the murder rate among recent veterans is higher than that of the general population of young men. It's not.

Au contraire, the columnist Ralph Peters calculated that Iraq and Afghanistan vets are about one-fifth as likely to murder you as the average 18-to-34-year-old American male. Better yet, the blogger Iowahawk meticulously drew his own "patchwork picture" of another "quiet phenomenon": the Denver newspaper columnist arrested for stalking, the Cincinnati TV reporter facing child-molestation charges, the Philadelphia anchorwoman who went on a violent drunken rampage. As Iowahawk's one-man investigative unit wondered:

"Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters?"

I posted about the Ralph Peters piece in Full Metal Straitjacket. This all goes back to the Hollywooden fantasy world that the left draws its version of reality from, which Steyn once called the Full Metal Deer Apocalypse. In that fictional world, all soldiers are mentally defective, killers just waiting for a chance. It's more than just fiction, it is false. 

Funny thing, yesterday my son attended the wedding of one of his fellow Iraq war veterans. Since coming back from his second tour, he hasn't killed anyone. Neither have any of his fellow soldiers. Instead they have found jobs, gotten married, had children, you know, pretty much what everyone else does every day in this country. My son is being groomed to step up into a supervisory job because of his experience, not in spite of it.

It's sad that the Times and so many others in the media cannot see past their Hollywood-inspired fictions and see the real world. They are the losers here. They are the ones in need of treatment.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll says that another generation may need the services of someone like B.G. Burkett. Cold Fury says "Never Again." Powerline notes a serious derangement at the NYT and in the media in general. Sisu emailed Iowahawk.