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Thread ID: 6150 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2003-04-14
2003-04-14 20:12 | User Profile
I feel the same way as these Iraqis do as I walk America's streets. I don't believe half the people I see are Americans, either.
[url=http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0409WarTroopDiversity09-ON.html]Ethnic diversity of U.S. troops puzzles Iraqis[/url]
By Ron Harris St. Louis Post-Dispatch Apr. 9, 2003 07:10 AM
SOUTH OF BAGHDAD - The Marines were less than 48 hours into their invasion of Iraq when Pfc. Michael Lara of Raymondville, Texas., was first asked the question that he and some other Marines would get repeatedly from civilians.
Lara, 19, was standing guard in the turret of his Humvee manning a machine gun along the Shatt Al-Basra bridge in southern Iraq when an old man and his two sons asked permission to pass across the strategic checkpoint.
As Marines waved the man through, he suddenly turned to Lara and asked, "Kuwaiti?"
A stunned Lara paused for a second because he wasn't sure the man was talking to him.
"Kuwait?" the man asked again.
"Naw," Lara responded, "American, Mexican.
"But I don't think he believed me," Lara, a member of Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, said later. "He just keep looking at me."
As the Marines continue to move across the country toward Baghdad, their racial and ethnic diversity has caught the Iraqis by surprise. It has become an almost comical guessing game as locals repeatedly either mistake the ethnicity of the Marines or they spend their time trying to figure it out.
Cpl. Raul San Martin, a 23-year-old Mexican American from Los Angeles, was first mistaken for Iraqi, then Kuwaiti as he was standing guard a few days ago in defense of the Marines' position at a soccer stadium in the town of Numaniyah.
"He kept asking if I was one thing and then the other, and I was thinking, 'Well, now I know that if I wanted to I could get a job for the CIA,' " San Martin said Saturday as he again was standing guard, this time along a road leading into Baghdad.
The Marines just take the guessing game with a smile.
"They're just curious," said Cpl. Henok Tefera, 30, who was born in Ethiopia but now calls Columbus, Ohio, home. "You tell them, we're U.S., we're all U.S."
Sometimes the questions leave the Marines confused.
"Yeah, these kids asked me if I was Iraqi," Navy Corpsman Ron Dawson, 20, an African-American from Columbus, Ga., said incredulously. "I don't look Iraqi. At least I certainly don't think I look Iraqi."
But Corpsman Benedict Bito, 19, of Alameda, Calif., may have gotten the strangest question while at his post in Numaniyah.
"One kid asked me was I related to (martial artists movie star) Jackie Chan," said Bito, who is Filipino. "I was standing guard in the square and the people started to stare at me. At first they told me I was Chinese, then they said Korean and finally one guy thought I was Vietnamese.
"They just couldn't believe I was American."
Cpl. Quentin Milroe of Chicago got that same disbelief a few days ago when he and other members of India Company visited a small village about four miles south of the town Afak looking for weapons caches.
"So, we went to this area and the elder of the village came out, and we started asking him were there any weapons in the village," said Milroe, a 24-year-old African-American. "This elder just kept staring at me and then he made a gesture for me to speak."
When Milroe didn't, the elder said to him, "Syrian. Syrian."
"I said no, American," Milroe said.
Positive, however, that he had Milroe's identity pegged right, the elder refused to accept that response and turned to Lt. Adrian Haskamp, a 27-year-old Puerto Rican and India Company platoon leader.
"I guess he thought maybe because I was doing all the talking he figured out that I was in charge," said Haskamp of Greensboro, N.C. "So, he points to Milroe and says to me 'Syrian. Syria.' "
Haskamp gestured no and repeated, "American."
Their business concluded, the elder turned and started back heading toward his house, but as he did, Milroe and Haskamp said they could hear him muttering to himself in disbelief, 'Syrian. Syrian."
2003-04-14 22:23 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar,
All too True!!!
** I feel the same way as these Iraqis do as I walk America's streets. I don't believe half the people I see are Americans, either.**
"They" murdered America, a once great European Nation! And I hate all those so-called "Liberals" I hate them!!!
:gun: :gun: :gun:
2003-04-15 00:36 | User Profile
Faust, as hard as it is for our Eauropean heritage consciousnesses to suffer regarding this fact about the history of our " nation ", we have to move forward. It's a differnt world, a different era.. a different paradigm, a different REALITY than it even was 40 years ago. Every decade bring more corrosion.. Perhaps we should consider the DISTINCT FACT that it's not going to be the United States of America which speaks to the inner truths we hold. But in this day and age, nothing substantial can be established without military power. I truly believe that a re-establishment can only happen within the avenue of another nation, not the United States of America.
That is, adressing your sentiments.. in other regards, more important ones, does it matter one whit ?
2003-04-15 00:57 | User Profile
Anti-Yuppie, fine. lets expand it. But the facts of history and generational memory handed down are not commesurate with what is being dished down the throats of Americans through the media for quite a while now. I started to write a general breakdown, but it would take me hours !!
Perhaps another time ! The bottome line - 19th cent - English, French, Italians, Dutch, Prussian/German, Swedish, Irish, Chinese laborers, Negro slaves. EARLY 20th cent - more Italians, Irish, English, French from Canada, --
Stop the progression of society right there. There is absolutely no good which has sprung in America since the Depression era. Everything since is only a monetary circumstance. Oh yes, I know I didn't mention the Jews as having any role in CONSTRUCTING America, because they did not, yet they have a PREDOMINANT role in our MEDIA and FOREIGN POLICY . That's just the fruit of their labors of the last 100 years.... isnt it funny how they have nothing to do with what made this country great ???
2003-04-15 01:08 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Apr 14 2003, 20:40 **Let's extend an open question to liberal and neoconservative "propositionalists": what does it really mean to be an "American" when one "American's" ancestors came a settlers from Europe, another "American's" ancestors came on a slave galley from the Congo Basin in West Africa, another "American's" ancestors worshiped Quetzalcoatl in the Yucatan, while another's ancestry (dubiously) traces back to the Middle East?
What can all of the above possibly have in common besides having a similarly-stamped piece of paper as their passport and ID?**
You strike right at the heart of the matter, AY. The FReeper types will say that America's current inhabitants (who increasingly resemble the UN General Assembly) are united by their love of "freedom." "Freedom," these days, means nothing in light of the USA Patriot Act, legislation that has been necessitated by the presence of Arab terrorists in this country who couldn't have even gotten in prior to the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act.
The neocons and liberals both readily shout, "America is strong because of her diversity." That's something I can't understand. How can America be the "strongest nation on earth" by virtue of the fact that she is a cross-section of every nation on earth? That formula seems to me to be more like a median average or a "lowest common denominator," rather than a "strength."
Also, I think that this topic touches on the globalization phenomenon as well, in this pan-capitalist world we live in. America has been reduced to a corporate brand logo, and the regime's "official patriotism" is just a glossy ad campaign aimed at encouraging brand loyalty among the world's consumers. I guess an "American" is anyone (everyone) who drinks Coke, eats at McDonald's, wears jeans, and doesn't say (or do) anything deemed "politically incorrect" or "anti-Semitic."
2003-04-15 04:26 | User Profile
Even the ignorant rags know who the only real Americans are.
Too bad the Chimp-in-Chief can't say the same.
2003-04-15 13:31 | User Profile
N.B. Forrest,
Great Post!
** Even the ignorant rags know who the only real Americans are. Too bad the Chimp-in-Chief can't say the same.**
On a related note.
Why VDARE? [url=http://www.vdare.com/why_vdare.htm]http://www.vdare.com/why_vdare.htm[/url]
2003-04-16 05:24 | User Profile
With the liberal rags admitting last month that US combat troops are 90% white, and special forces almost 99% white, I think most of this story is propaganda.
What is disturbing, is how many terrorists from the Middle East can wander into the US, with our Border Patrol looking the other way, assuming they're more Messicans. Then they can blow something up, something filled with innocent Americans. And those of us at OD will know who to thank. Izzy and our traitors in government.
2003-04-17 00:33 | User Profile
Roger Bannister,
As I recall our so-called "Border Patrol" about 58% Mexican, with that number going up each year. Foxes protecting our Hen-house... :blink:
2003-04-17 01:38 | User Profile
Yeah, our so-called Border Patrol is overloaded with Latrinos - but that's because the BP isn't actually counted on to do its job. It's there in name only, actually helping the brown turdmen cross whenever it can. The military is still relied on to be the muscle for ZOG, and take a look at mestizo and black armies around the globe. There's the answer in a nutshell.