Is the Iraq War Turning Its Vets into Murderers?

that the number of stateside murders committed by active duty military personnel over the last six years had increased by 89% over the previous six-year period.

This is significant because the last six years coincide with the length of time the US armed forces have been involved with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Could the carnage of these Middle East conflicts be spilling over to the domestic front?

Reading the report, you'd think so. But the piece itself posits no explanation for the increase. It merely marks the murder rate at 89% higher than it was from 1996 to 2001, bringing the number of homicides committed by all active-duty military since the beginning of 2002 to 349. The number of murders perpetrated by Iraq and Afghanistan vets alone was 121.

But what does this really tell us? Is post-traumatic stress turning veterans violent at home? Are these 121 dead Americans collateral damage from the Bush Administration's war campaigns?

First, let's look at this from a statistical standpoint. How many Iraq and Afghan War vets are there? That information can't be nailed down yet as the conflicts are ongoing. But according to the Department of Veterans Affairs

the number of soldiers who served in Vietnam was over 3 million. And the number who served in the Gulf War of 1991 was 700,000.

The Iraq and Afghan Wars are closer in scale to Vietnam than they are the Gulf War, but I won't assume that the number of veterans of those wars is anywhere near 3 million at this point. But surely, at six times the length of the Gulf War, there are many more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghan vets to this date. So, conservatively, let's split the difference between the Gulf War and Vietnam and assume that 1.5 million military personnel have now served in the current Middle Eastern conflicts.

Among these 1.5 million people (a number equivalent in size to the city of Philadelphia), 121 of them committed murder. Over six years, that translates into 20 homicides annually.

How many people were murdered in Philadelphia over the same time? An average of 350 per year. Or a little more than 2,000 in all.

In 2003, the murder rate in Philadelphia was 23.3 people per 100,000. In Detroit it was 39.4, in Baltimore it was 41.9, in DC it was 44.0 and, in New Orleans, it was 57.7. The murder rate for Iraq and Afghan war vets, assuming that there are 1.5 million of them and that they averaged 20 domestic murders in 2003, is 1.3 per 100,000.

So, in other words, these veterans were outpaced by their civilian counterparts when committing murder by a factor of 20 in Philadelphia and a factor of 50 in New Orleans.

In fact, no major US city comes close to matching the low murder rate that exists among Iraq and Afghan war vets except for one -- Honolulu -- which reported only 1.7 murders per 100,000 people in 2003. The vets still beat the Islands and are well below typically safe large cities such as Portland, Oregon and San Diego. Civillian Portlanders and San Diegans are still four times more likely to murder somebody than are today's war vets.

But the report does raise an interesting question. Why did the murder rate among active duty military personnel increase by 89% the last six years over the previous six? Could post-traumatic stress syndrome have caused this spike? I'm sure there's a very good chance of that. Could the spike have been caused by an increase in the number of total service members? Government statistics show that the numbers in the military ranks of today are roughly the same as they were ten years ago.

So, no, the spike was not caused by increased personnel. Regardless, the murder rate by those soldiers deployed in the Middle East theaters is still lower than their non-combat military counterparts who, evidentally, killed 228 people over the same period and the peace-time service people of the previous six-year period who murdered 184. But when the rate of murderer to nonmurderer within such a large group is .001%, couldn't such fluctuations simply be a natural statistical ebb and flow?

Homicide rates by profession is an interesting statistical category. I wonder how many medical professionals killed somebody in the last six years. Or lawyers. Or postal workers. Would they fare have fared as well as combat vets? Would the homicide rates of factory workers spark the same outrage that the New York Times report probably did in various circles?

I don't know.

But when a typical civilian in Philadelphia or Chicago is 20 times more likely to murder a fellow American than an Iraq War vet, to what end does this report really serve?