Of all the scandals swirling around the Obama administration these days, the most misunderstood is the one involving supposedly skyrocketing sexual assaults in our armed forces.
A Defense Department report this month said some 26,000 uniformed personnel may have been victims of sexual assault in 2012, way above the 3,374 officially reported sexual assaults for the year. Then came news of the arrest on charges of sexual battery of the head of the Air Force’s sexual-assault prevention program.
The sensation has unleashed a flood of criticism of our military’s way of handling sex crimes, including from its service chiefs.
Sexual assault and rape are serious crimes. Any credible accusation, in or out of the military, needs to be taken seriously. But no real solution to any problem can be built around flawed data — or by turning a system of justice into a political circus.
Yet that’s precisely what’s really going on here — starting with that report.
First off, it’s far from comprehensive or authoritative. It’s based entirely on a voluntary survey — and it’s wildly anti-scientific to extrapolate from a self-selected group. And only 22,792 service members opted to respond — roughly 2.2 percent of a military that’s 1 million strong.
Even more amazing, the survey never actually asked about sexual assault. Its questions centered on “unwanted sexual contact” — which can include any number of behaviors, including trying to slap someone on the buttocks, which may be vulgar or inappropriate but hardly rape (a very serious crime under the military’s Uniform Code of Justice).
The Pentagon simply used the survey’s reported “unwanted sexual contacts” to extrapolate a total number for sexual assaults for the armed forces as a whole. Do this for the same survey done in 2006, for example, and you’ve got a whopping 34,000 “assaults,” even though fewer than 3,000 sexual assaults were actually reported that year.
All the same, the 26,000 number has now become set in stone in the press and on Capitol Hill — and the calls for stopping an epidemic of “rape in the military” have been harsh and shrill.
President Obama declared that those “engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable . . . court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has said, “The military justice system needs to change to hold sexual predators accountable.” She’s also blocked the promotion of Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms because Helms dared to grant clemency in a sexual-assault case last year.
Meanwhile, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos has declared that “80 percent” of all sexual-assault allegations are “legitimate” and accused his fellow officers of being “soft” on offenders. Lt. Col. R.G. Palmer, a Marine judge, told an audience of junior officers bluntly, “We need more convictions.”
But other judges worry that if judges and juries in military justice cases start worrying that politically unpopular decisions will draw the wrath of their commanders and even wreck their careers, then the integrity of the entire Uniform Code is at risk.
Indeed, some critics see the code as the problem. Two advocates from the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault at the University of Texas in Austin have written that the supposedly high number of rapes in the military isn’t surprising, given its “male-dominated culture.”
Feminist firebrand Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) has even sponsored a bill to remove sexual-assault cases from the JAG system altogether and hand them over to a special prosecutor’s office — where an advisory council dominated by civilians would have final say. The goal, as New York’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand admits, is “to remove all decision-making out of the chain of command about whether to prosecute a case.”
If civilians get to decide when the military should prosecute a soldier or sailor for attempted rape, then why not for mistreatment of POWs? Why even let the military decide what constitutes insubordination or even cowardice in the face of the enemy?
Rape is a crime and an outrage. But overturning a time-tested system of military justice because of a “report” heavy on ideological bias and light on actual facts would be just as outrageous.
Arthur Herman’s “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II” will be out in paperback next month.