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Thread 8336

Thread ID: 8336 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-07-22

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Avalanche [OP]

2003-07-22 03:47 | User Profile

[url=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/15/161239.shtml]http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2...15/161239.shtml[/url]

Black, Hispanic Casualties Not Disproportionate NewsMax.com Wednesday, July 16, 2003 Claims that black and Hispanic soldiers would serve as cannon fodder for Operation Iraqi Freedom have been proven wrong.

Before the war, the likes of Reps. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., and John Conyers, D-Mich., complained that a disproportionate number of non-white troops would suffer. (Thirty-two of thirty-seven members of Congressional Black Caucus voted against the use of force.)

Even lily-white Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., pandering to black voters, parroted this complaint. But the facts show that these claims turned out to be false.

Because the numbers don’t lie or engage in demagoguery, NewsMax.com examined the statistics.

Since the war began in March, 26 U.S. heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country were black, and about 25 of the nation’s honored war dead had a Hispanic or partly Hispanic heritage.

As of July 10, hostile fire and accidents have killed 213 U.S. troops in Iraq. This means:

Blacks accounted for 12.2 percent of deaths, less than their 13 percent share of the U.S. population.

Hispanics, classified by the Census Bureau as an ethnic group that includes the various races, accounted for 11.7 percent of deaths, less than their 13.3 percent share of the population.

In today’s military, blacks make up about 23 percent of all troops but only 10.6 percent of the Army’s enlisted combat infantrymen.

Fewer than 8 percent of all military personnel are Hispanic, according to the Defense Department. However, military experts qualify that this is a difficult statistic to prove because ethnicity is self-defined.

One thing is for sure: Racial minorities have not borne a disproportionate number of casualties. The media establishment, leftist pundits and Hollywood movies such as “Dead Presidents” invented the myth of Vietnam as a slaughterhouse for black and Hispanic soldiers.

As NewsMax has reported, a recent study conducted by Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, concluded that of the 648,500 troops who served in Vietnam, less than 11 percent were black. Of casualties and deaths, about 12 percent were black. At the time blacks made up 13.5 percent of the population.

In the 1991 Gulf War, black troops made up 23 percent of the overall military and suffered 11 percent of combat deaths.

“Black enlistees have been attracted to positions in the armed forces that do not involve direct combat, opting instead for jobs that provide marketable job skills after their terms are up, such as unit administration and communications,” FrontPageMagazine.com observed. “In addition, blacks in the military do considerably better than their counterparts in the civilian population, earning on average $32,000 annually, compared to $27,900 in the private sector. All in all, one can hardly make the case that blacks in the armed forces are being discriminated against or are bearing a ‘disproportionate share of the burden.’"

"If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites," Moskos noted. "Actually, it's mostly the white working class that is going to die in Iraq."

His prediction has come true. A casualty is more likely to be a white man from West Virginia or Idaho than a minority from Harlem or East L.A.

Since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major military operations in Iraq, 76 U.S. troops have died from hostile action and accidents in that troubled country – an average of about one a day. Since the war began in March, 145 have died in hostile fire, a figure rapidly closing on the tally of 147 KIA in the 1991 Gulf War. An additional 68 American troops have died in Iraq from causes not directly caused by hostile fire.

In recent weeks, guerrilla-like forces have been attacking American troops about a dozen times each day. Pentagon officials suggest the attacks are coming from former Baath Party members, paramilitaries, non-Iraqi fighters and the detritus of Saddam Hussein’s security forces.

The 213 deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom include 124 from the Army, 80 from the Marine Corps, five from the Air Force and four from the Navy.

“Rough road behind, rough road ahead,” Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded U.S. forces in the war, said recently when handing over command of the operation to Gen. John Abizaid.