JAMES TARANTO: Strange Bedfellows: The Politics Of A Moral Panic.

But again, the military defines “assault” as including any unwanted touching of “private body parts.” That goes too far even for Gloria Steinem, at least when applied to a commander in chief of whom she approves: “He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter [Kathleen Willey] during a low point in her life,” Steinem wrote in a 1998 New York Times op-ed. “She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.”

In exaggerating the problem of military sexual assault, the Pentagon is responding to its civilian masters in both the executive branch and Congress. A moral panic is under way, and military officers–who are trained to follow orders and whose ultimate commanders are civilians–are not equipped to resist it. The result is that weak or completely bogus cases go to courts-martial, either producing unjust verdicts or reducing conviction rates–and in the latter case giving further ammunition to politicians anxious to push the military to “do more” about “sexual assault.” . . .

As long as politicians (and journalists) persist in exaggerating the prevalence of sexual assault in the military, the Pentagon will follow suit, and prosecutions on false or dubious charges will continue to proliferate. A decent resolution to this problem will remain impossible until the moral panic passes. One can only hope the effectiveness and morale of the U.S. military doesn’t suffer too much in the interim.

For some, of course, hurting the military’s position is not a bug, but a feature.