"MY biggest complaint is ignoring that these things do happen... or trying to white wash the incidents. A soldier is being tried in Charlotte right now charged with murder..."
Well said.
A lot has changed in the 55 years since the Korean "conflict." Despite the way Hollywood and the MSM portray things, atrocities are fairly rare, given the potential for such things to happen. When they do happen, they are often given more attention than they might deserve.
Too often we forget that our military people are a "slice" of our society. They aren't all poor kids from Brooklyn or Detroit, or from a barrio in LA. What happens in our society will happen with GIs, both the good and the bad. Putting a kid in uniform neither makes him a saint nor a bloody murderer.
The discipline of the military will cause many kids who are otherwise disposed to bad deeds to restrain themselves, but it can't stop them entirely, especially if a group of similarly minded people get together. But again, this is no different than what happens in street gangs in our cities.
I'd argue that, given the stress and pressures our troops are under, they are probably the best-behaved military in history. Sure, sometimes officers and senior NCOs aren't there, or aren't able to control things perfectly; but when that happens, rarely, it doesn't mean our military isn't finest and most ethical in the world. |
