Just Poor Kids Fighting A Rich Man's War

This is true, although we have declined to extend many privileges and courtesies to the immediate families of foreign nationals serving in the military, even and in fact especially if the service member is KIA.

It's a fucking shame, too.

Indeed, I don't think its too great a burden to this country to impute anyones ultimate sacrifice in service of it to their nearest and dearest. Unfortunately the "Katie, bar the door!" faction still pretty much control our immigration policy and this administration seems uncharacteristically cost sensitive when it comes to veterans and survivors benefits.

oh, wait, i'm on the current events board again..


[Edited on Jul 01, 2005 by RumpusParable]

For Demetrius_Z:

Link 1: scroll down some to get to the pertinent parts.

Link 2: scroll down to Representation In Occupations; this shows the status quo from a few years back.

[Edited on Jul 01, 2005 by Phoebus]

There's a story I read a few days ago about a Phillipino lady whose son died in Iraq. I found an online version of it on USA Today.

Apparently, the head of the "Gold Star Mothers" organization said that she couldn't be part of the group, as she herself wasn't American. Here's a nice quote:

Several members were contacted, and, not surprisingly, none of them had any issue with her joining.

Here's my take on the matter: If losing your offpsring to the service of the United States of America doesn't make you an American by right of sacrifice, then I don't know what should.

[Edited on Jun 30, 2005 by Phoebus]

I don't know how accurate these figures are. I got them from a "New Internationalist" magazine issue 378 May 2005 article: "Life Lottery". It doesn't seem to be online yet. I'll scan it later.

--
Isn't it the case that about a third of the Us forces stationed in Iraq (this is about 32,000 troops out of about 130,000) are non US citizens? This includes the navy, Marine corps, army and air force.

Hispanics make up about 12% of the US population but about 17% of 'front line troops'.

US DoD figures say Latinos have a 13% casualty rate, about 2.5 times that of other serving members.

70 of the first 1000 deaths were Mexican.

Well, it all depends on what their definition of 'front line troops' is, I suppose. The manpower studies I read suggest that minorities, without any disrespect intended, have been "underrepresented" in the combat arms fields (infantry, etc.).

I wouldn't be surprised if your source considered combat support fields to be 'front line troops' due to the nature of the fight we're involved in. If that were the case, the increased casualty rates would make sense. Combat support troops involved in a fight will, in theory at least, suffer higher rates of casualties than combat arms troops.

I can't really speak for your earlier figure (regarding the non-US citizens). I'm not sure how (or if) the article I linked to earlier might play into that somehow.

icasualties.org

American Indian or Alaska Native	14	0.88%

Asian					32	2.01%

Black or African American 		175	11.01%

Hispanic or Latino 			181	11.39%

Multiple races, pending, or unknown	19	1.20%

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 	17	1.07%

White					1151	72.44%

im actually a marine and not all of us went in because were poor granted the military dosent pay us that much but iknew what i was getting into long before i joined in and if you were in and alot of people in the military had other things gong for them before if you actually were in the military id have no problem with this thread but your not so dont try to say something like that that you know nothing at all about

What's with all these ancient threads resurfacing?