War, and military life in general, bring out the worst in all the participants. Rape committed by American soldiers against civilians was reportedly common in Italy during the war. I spoke to the son of an eyewitness, who remarked that the Germans were highly disciplined and punished severely for this sort of crime (the Italians were their allies, and it was bad public relations), the Americans who replaced them weren’t.

I once read a book by a Japanese scholar about Japanese war crimes (particularly sexual atrocities) in China and Korea (the man is not very popular in Japan, as you can imagine). He devoted an entire chapter to rape of civilians by American troops during the post WWII occupation of Japan. He conceded it was not officially sanctioned, but that the American military authorities did little to follow up reports, fully investigate crimes, or to punish the guilty.

These are just individual data points, and reports like this prove nothing in isolation. There is an enormous gulf from the inevitable occasional incident, and widespread practice, and one witness or report proves nothing. But there is no reason to believe Americans are intrinsically any different than anybody else.

My own experience in the Navy did not include rape, but I could plainly see that organized prostitution on a mass scale was going on, and with the support of local authorities. I imagined how it would be like if great foreign naval bases like Subic Bay, Yokosuka, and Sasebo existed in American ports, and it was our girls working in that industry instead. For many foreigners, this is all they know about Americans.

I knew the sex trade was widespread in European US bases as well, like Napoli and Rota, although I never stopped at any of them.

“Hey sailor, You number one. I love you no shit. Buy me dlink.”

Doesn’t excuse it, but it’s not any kind of “sign of the times.”

Is this assaults on other military personnel? Civilians? Domestic or overseas?

I looked up the actual report. I haven’t read it myself to answer these questions (734 pages), just the executive summary, but I’m putting it out there. If you’re interested, save it to your own disk after the tedious download. It’s frigging 28 MB. Sorry.

The “greatest generation” simply didn’t talk much about the ugly side of World War II. It was a Glenn Miller/Andrews Sister war.

Today we have professional soldiers, endless repeated deployments, broken families, no local girls and brothels and plenty of round-eyed young women everywhere. It’s a rap and hip-hop war.

Of course, you can’t really blame the troops, or even the brass. I’m sure this is an unanticipated response to stress, just as the Vietnam Era problems were. But I suspect the contemporary our-heroes-can-do-no-wrong attitude is not going to make it any easier to identify the problem, or to do anything about it.

The “he said, she said” nature of many of these reports strain the civilian legal system which includes professional investigators with training and experience, attorneys and judges. Charges simply aren’t filed in many, many civilian cases for lack of evidence. That is not to say that the accused isn’t guilty, it’s to say an attorney could claim “reasonable doubt” effectively when it is just one person’s word against another.

Panetta says he wants to keep the investigatory and discipline process in the chain of command. I’d suggest he move those complaints out of the chain and into a staff process where professionals acting like a civilian grand jury can investigate and then make recommendations to the chain, which would then conduct the further proceedings.

But let the woman talk first with experienced people, and let the field grade people off the hook. They aren’t qualified for this one.