When Will It Stop? Sexual Assault Claims Pile Up In Military

“There is no silver bullet,” for stopping military sexual assault President Obama said earlier this week. Surely, that came as no surprise to his former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who said more than a year ago: “There is no silver bullet when it comes” to solving military sexual assault.

That couldn’t have been news to K.C. McClain. As an Air Force brigadier general in 2005, McClain told reporters then that a series of actions the Pentagon was taking—again to combat sexual assault—was “not a silver bullet. To do this right, it is going to take time,” she said.

Incredibly, Chuck Hagel, the current secretary of defense, came out to alert the troops on Friday that there is no “silver bullet” to fixing a problem that just gets worse.