A few days ago, the NY Times did a hit piece on our troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Oh, by the way, 20% of these 121 cases involved manslaughter associated with drunk driving and at least one example occurred before the soldier deployed. Hey, no need to let the facts get in the way of your narrative, right?

GI Korea (among many others) has been all over this story. He has another post up that shows the worldwide negative impact the Times disparaging article has had on the reputation of our military men and women.

The sad thing about this anti-American propaganda is that the whole premise is demonstratively false. Wrong on the facts, and most assuredly wrong on the conclusion that our GWOT vets are walking time bombs who are a danger to society. As I said in a comment left at GI Korea:

This is just more of the same old, same old from the biased left wing MSM. I remember last year it was about the “increase” in suicides amongst returning troops. Well, they didn’t find it newsworthy that the suicide rate of Iraq vets is LESS than the national suicide rate for all Americans of that age group. So, I guess serving in Iraq makes one LESS likely to commit suicide, right?

Anyway, Armed Liberal has a good post on this topic at Winds of Change. Even taking the NYT’s skewed numbers, it turns out that the “murder” rate of returning vets is significantly lower than the national rate for 18-25 year olds. Geez, why wasn’t that the headline?

So, what is it that makes the Times and its defenders despise and fear our war veterans? I think Ralph Peters has the answer in a New York Post column entitled “The New Lepers”:

The purpose of Sunday’s instantly notorious feature “alerting” the American people that our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are all potential murderers when they move in next door was to mark those defenders of freedom as “unclean” – as the new lepers who can’t be trusted amid uninfected Americans.

In the more than six years since 9/11, the Times has never run a feature story half as long on any of the hundreds of heroes who’ve served our country – those who’ve won medals of honor, distinguished service crosses, Navy crosses, silver stars or bronze stars with a V device (for valor)….

Well, a quick statistics check let the air out of the Times’ bid to make us dread the veteran down the block – who the Times implies has a machine gun under his bathrobe when he steps out front to fetch the morning paper. In fact, the capital-crimes rate ballyhooed by the Gray Lady demonstrates that our returning troops are far less likely to commit such an offense.

Again, the Times’ smear certainly wasn’t an accident. The paper’s staff is highly paid and highly experienced. Its editors know that a serious news story has to put numbers into context. But their sole attempt at context was to note that offenses by former soldiers have ticked up since we went to war.

The Times is trying to make you fear our veterans (Good Lord, if your daughter marries one, she’s bound to be beaten to death!). And to convince you that our military would be a dreadful place for your sons and daughters, a death-machine that would turn them into incurable psychopaths.

To a darkly humorous degree, all this reflects the Freudian terrors leftists feel when confronted with men who don’t have concave chests. But it goes far beyond that.

Pretending to pity tormented veterans (vets don’t want our pity – they want our respect), the Times’ feature was an artful example of hate-speech disguised as a public service…

The hard left’s hatred of our military has deteriorated from a political stance into a pathology: The only good soldier is a dead soldier who can be wielded as a statistic (out of context again). Or a deserter who complains bitterly that he didn’t join the Army to fight . . .

A longstanding goal of the left, recently invigorated, has been to drive a wedge between our military and our society. The real vet is the neighbor who fixes your kid’s bike (or your computer). But the left’s archetypal vet is the Marine colonel in “American Beauty” who, frustrated in his suppressed gay passions, murders poor Kevin Spacey…

So let me suggest the best-possible revenge on the veteran-trashing jerks at The New York Times: Instead of fleeing in terror the next time you see a veteran you know, just thank him or her for their service.

I was shaking my head in disgust when I read the commenters defending the Times at GI Korea. No right thinking person could fail to see through the obvious agenda of disparaging the brave troops who defend this nation. I just couldn’t grasp what it was about our soldiers that inspired such contempt. But I can only conclude as did Mr. Peters that: all this reflects the Freudian terrors leftists feel when confronted with men who don’t have concave chests.

Sometimes I really fear for my country.