Starting To Set The Record Straight

Saw a great guest post on USNI blog site titled "Not my Navy, Marine Corps...or Army Either".  You can read it here.

I've been wondering when someone would step forward to say "STOP".  Military leadership, Congress, no-nothings, and the press have delighted in dragging the military through the mud the last few months over the so-called crisis of sexual assault.  This blog post and the two articles it links to starts to set the record straight.  I think it lays out the facts quite clearly and pushes back on the chicken little's decrying the "crisis" that the military is facing.  Bottom line...it's BS.  The figures are BS, the survey methodology is BS, the insulting accusations are BS.  Now don't get me wrong.  Are there problems?  Yes.  Is every instance of sexual assault a tragedy?  Yes.  Should every instance be investigated and each perpetrator receive swift punishment?  Most definitely.  But it seems to me that by obscuring the statistics and by dramatically exaggerating the problem, it appears to be an unfounded crises.  This is no way to solve the problem.  It only makes people hunker down.  It drives the organization to take ridiculous and unproductive measures.  I guarantee that there will be mandatory lectures full of death by PowerPoint.  There will be severe over-reaction on the deck plates.  No doubt about it.  I just hope that at some point truth and logic will prevail.  But it will get worse before it gets better.

And here's the thing that really pisses me off.  I had three different Command tours.  I was in charge of people operationally, in a training environment, and across the span of an entire region.  Additionally, as a Junior Officer "growing up" in the Navy, I was continually in charge of increasingly large numbers of people of both genders.  I also had many, many, many friends and shipmates that I respected and had a close professional relationship with throughout my career who were also in positions of command and great responsibility.  Never, repeat never, would I or anyone I knew in a position of authority or leadership ignore a sexual assault.  Never.  It is unimaginable.  And yet to listen to the latest nonsense coming out of the press and some in leadership positions who should know better, there is an epidemic, in fact almost a conspiracy, of military leadership to sweep this all under the rug.  To ignore or suppress sexual assault in the ranks.  Let me repeat...this is total BS.  Has it ever happened?  I'm sure it has.  But it is not remotely the norm.  And if you've not been part of a military organization and read some of the garbage out there, don't believe it.