Thomas Donnelly: The Military Epidemics That Aren't

Article here. Excerpt:

'The recent debate about sexual assault in the military also reflects the notion that there is something fundamentally diseased about the institution itself. The New York Times has editorialized on "the military's entrenched culture of sexual violence." Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) demands that the country replace the military chain of command with civilian legal processes in cases of sexual harassment and assault because the military is inadequate to deal with crimes of "dominance and violence and power." Ms. Gillibrand has been joined in her legislative effort by two leading libertarian Senate Republicans, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

Yet the numbers bandied about to show an epidemic of sexual violence in the U.S. military are questionable. In May, Capt. Lindsay Rodman, a judge advocate stationed at U.S. Marine Headquarters in Arlington, Va., reported on this page, for example, that the number of military sexual assaults frequently cited in Congress and elsewhere are based on a badly distorted interpretation of a Defense Department survey. In recent months the American public has often heard that 26,000 service members were sexually assaulted last year. But that statistic comes from an unscientific poll and refers to "unwanted sexual contact," including touching the buttocks or even attempted touching.

Moreover, as Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, wrote recently in the Weekly Standard, "there is no evidence that the military has a higher rate of sexual assault than, say, colleges and universities. Indeed, what paltry evidence there is suggests the opposite."'