When I joined up in 1987, my senior NCO's were mostly Vietnam vets who had stories about how bad things had been in the immediate aftermath of their war. "The 'Nam" was awful; so were the stateside postings. Suicide, violent crime (up to and including homicide) and drug abuse were rampant. Being in the service then was pretty much like living in the worst ghetto in the country, except Uncle Sam provided the weapons for the gang fights.

The ones who stuck it out worked hard to rebuild the military, and they succeeded. During my terms of service (two years Army infantry, eight years Air Force medic) I served in a military that was proud, professional, and took care of its people. As a medic, I was part of a team that provided top-notch medical and psychological care to everyone who needed it, without question and without stigma. A broken mind was treated no differently than a broken leg: it was a problem, and we fixed it. This was true in Desert Storm, and it was true in peacetime, the whole time I was in. When I returned to civilian life in 1997, I was confident that I was leaving behind a system that would continue to live up to the standards I had been proud to uphold.

(Yeah, there was that Gulf War Syndrome thing. But that was notable because it was an exception to the rule. Honest to God.)

And now these sons of bitches have wrecked it. Bush and his cronies managed to do just as much damage to our military -- to our kids -- with Iraq as Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon managed with Vietnam, and in less than half the time. I've seen friends of mine who stayed in, dedicated soldiers and airmen who loved the service like a family, burned out and tossed out and turned into bitter, crippled wrecks. And it's just getting worse.

We have to stop this. Somehow.

What kind of person wants to join the army at 18? Either one who is naive, or one who is deluded, I would guess.

Everyone is kind of naive and deluded at 18. The ones who join the service because they want to Serve Their Country And Have Adventures aren't necessarily any more naive and deluded than the ones who think that going to college will Teach Them Everything They Need To Know To Get A Great Job or that working at a convenience store will Lead To An Exciting Career In Retail Management. Honestly, I have no idea what your life was like when you graduated from high school, but I'd be willing to bet you didn't have any better of a handle on impending adulthood than the rest of us did.

Anyway. Yes, the service can mess people up in unique ways, and wartime service particularly. Trust me, I know, I've been there. But some wars, and some terms of service, mess people up more than others. We can't prevent or fix all the damage -- but we can do a hell of a lot better than we're doing now.

Care to give some context to your statement? Otherwise what you say is true, but meaningless; it's like saying "2+2=4" in a discussion on the stimulus package.

This is just a hunch, but I'd guess that the correlation between making the statement that "correlation is not causation" without explaining how it applies to a specific situation, and knowledge of how statistical analysis actually works, is very close to -1. And yeah, there's a causative effect going on there.

In other words, you've got nothing. Thanks for confirming my guess.

You're being disingenuous. The difference between violent crime and nonviolent crime is very easy to understand. Violent crime is crime in which physical force is used. Nonviolent crime is crime in which this does not occur. People are generally more scared of violent crime than of nonviolent crime, and for good reason.

Examples of violent crime: murder, rape, armed robbery, arson.

Examples of nonviolent crime: fraud, prostitution, simple theft (e.g. shoplifting.)

And yes, damn it, drug dealing is a nonviolent crime. The fact that there is a lot of violence in the drug trade is a red herring -- illegalize anything that people want and violence will occur around it. But the majority of people going to prison for selling drugs are going to prison only for selling drugs, not for murder or robbery or assault.