ANALYSIS – Surprise! More than a year-and-a-half after it was supposed to have been completed, the Biden Department of Defense, under pressure from the liberal media, finally published the study about extremism in the ranks conducted by an independent think tank.
And it's very good news.
Despite trying to hide it for months, and then releasing it quietly over the holidays – the 262-page report was only released this week, between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve – the Pentagon-ordered study destroys another Democrat-led, media-hyped false narrative.
Apparently, the U.S. military is not filled with white supremacists, right-wing fanatics or any violent extremists at all. Sorry, Team Biden and mainstream liberal media.
The bad news is that the ideological witch hunt for “phantom” extremists has hurt our military.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the “Study on Extremist Activity within the Total Force” in April 2021 as one of four “immediate actions” announced in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
As The Wall Street Journal notes:
The think tank tasked with the report, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate” to U.S. society. A review of Pentagon data suggested “fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years,” the report says.
That figure could include a range of conduct and ideological bent, not simply the white supremacy floated in the press. Take court martials. Researchers found that “the prevalence of extremist and gang-related activity that are reflected in court-martial opinions is limited to fewer than 20 cases” since 2012. Gang activity isn't typically political and, excluding those cases, the number falls to one a year.
One useful conclusion is that the military doesn't need a new section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to punish what few “extremist” criminal cases exist. Researchers note that commanders can rely on Article 116 (riot or breach of peace); Article 88 (contempt toward officials); Article 109 (destruction or damage to property); Article 115 (communication of threats), among others such as assault.
Well, what a surprise.
These conclusions didn't stop the establishment press from twisting the facts to suit their narrative. USA Today, for example, cherry-picked sentences from the study to try to show that: “Participation rates for former service members appear to be growing.”
But these are veterans, not anyone still in the U.S. military. And if you go from two to four cases, that is ‘growing,' but still insignificant.
And then there was the spin by the liberals at Task and Purpose, arguing that, “although there is ‘no evidence' that violent extremism is ‘disproportionate' in the military compared to the wider American populace, it remains an issue with active-duty troops and veterans.”
Well, actually, no, it doesn't. A Rand survey found that, among veterans, support for “extremist groups and extremist ideals” is similar to or less than the general public.
So, there's that.
Meanwhile, the WSJ adds:
Even the Jan. 6 story isn't what you've heard. IDA found that “of the more than 700 federal cases in which charges were publicly available a year after these events, fewer than ten” were in the military at the time. There's “no evidence that service members were charged at a different rate than the members of the general population.”
Yes, the picture changes somewhat when veterans are included, but not enough to make it a crisis.
What the study does show is that the politicized inquisition into so-called extremism does polarize the entire active military. The study notes that “the risk to the military from widespread polarization and division in the ranks may be a greater risk than the radicalization of a few service members.”
That, along with Critical Race Theory (CRT), the radical trans agenda and other divisive leftist policies and indoctrination are the real threat to our military.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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