President Barack Obama used a reporter’s May 7 question about recent claims of sexual assault in the military to weigh in on an ongoing military criminal investigation.
During a White House press conference, the reporter asked Obama to comment on a Pentagon report about sexual assaults in the military, the May 5 arrest of a U.S. Air Force officer for allegedly groping a civilian woman, and recent decisions by military commanders to quash subordinates’ convictions for sexual assault.
The reporter was pre-selected by White House officials.
“If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable — prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged,” said Obama. “Period. It’s not acceptable.”
Obama’s answer illustrates his tendency to selectively discuss ongoing investigations that he feels comfortable addressing, while avoiding cases that prove politically risky for the Democrat.
For example, on April 17, he fended off an NBC question about Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who is facing murder charges for killing newborn infants.
“I can’t comment on it because it’s an active trial,” he said then, avoiding any comment on the legality and ethics of killing newborns.
However, he then used the Gosnell case to promote his policies. “What I can say is this … I think, President [Bill] Clinton said it pretty well when he said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare,” he said.
In March 2012, Obama jumped into the controversy about the shooting death of an African-American youth in Florida. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon [Martin],” he told reporters after delivering a Rose Garden statement, further fueling a national debate over the convoluted case.
In his answer Tuesday, Obama also sought to tamp down concerns that military sexual assaults are trending upward under his administration.
For example, the Washington Post reported May 7 that the Pentagon is expected to reveal a new survey saying that “about 26,000 personnel experienced ‘unwanted sexual contact’ last year, up from about 19,300 in 2010.”
The U.S. military includes 2.3 million regulars and reservists, so 26,000 cases amount to a rate of one case per 100 service members.
“Can you speak to the culture in the U.S. military that may be at play here and talk about your response to that and what you can do going forward to improve things?,” the reporter asked Obama.
In response, Obama pushed a very aggressive and broad response.
“Sexual assault is an outrage; it is a crime,” he said.
“I have directly spoken to [Defense] Secretary [Chuck] Hagel already today and indicating to him that we’re going to have to not just step up our game, we have to exponentially step up our game, to go at this thing hard,” he said.
“If it’s happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they’re wearing. And they may consider themselves patriots, but when you engage in this kind of behavior that’s not patriotic — it’s a crime. And we have to do everything we can to root this out,” he declared.
“One of the things that we’ve been trying to do is create a structure in which we’re starting to get accurate reporting … we are seeing a process, a system of accountability and transparency so that we can root this out completely,” he insisted.
“This is not what the U.S. military is about,” he said.
“It dishonors the vast majority of men and women in uniform who carry out their responsibilities and obligations with honor and dignity and incredible courage every single day,” he said.