Mexico now has the largest contingent of any Latin American nation fighting on the ground in Iraq. 8,000 Mexicans and those of Mexican-descent are troops who voluntarily joined the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. One Central American nation has supported Bush’s war in Iraq but Mexico was never a member of George Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing.”
Mexico’s sons have been marching off to U.S. wars since Pearl Harbor. Bush’s illegal aggression in Iraq has netted another windfall of Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans (including green card holders) to make up a sizable number of Marines and Army “grunts,” the likeliest to be killed. 50 percent of all new Army recruits are from foreign lands, not American citizens; they join in the hope of U.S. citizenship. They join for entry-level jobs. Many are my Mexican brothers.
About half of the 110,000 Latinos (Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Central and South Americans) in the U.S. military are of Mexican descent. Many of them smuggled into the U.S. as kids without legal documents.
A full military draft is in part behind Mr. Bush’s immigration amnesty plan to help many of these individuals gain U.S. citizenship. Not until the latter happens will Bush institute the much-needed military draft to continue his protracted guerrilla wars in the Middle East. Substantial numbers of Anglo-American citizens would then find a lesser degree of chance of being drafted and therefore a lesser impact on the white American Christian citizenry, the majority of which supports Mr. Bush in Iraq. Resistance from the white Christian right would be deflected as fewer of them would face an actual call-up as more Mexicans and Latinos would fill the ranks. Predictably most of America’s Christian Anglos refuse to join the military, they just support wars others must fight.
Latino troop numbers (two thirds of all Latinos are Mexican) still do not match general population proportions, thus Mexican youth are vigorously pursued by high school recruiters right along with Native Americans and inner city black youth. The U.S. Marine Corps is particularly aggressive and Mexicans now form 13% of that branch of service. Because Marine units from Camp Pendleton in San Diego, which have high numbers of Mexican recruits, led the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and later were brought back to level Fallujah in November 2004, the casualty rates have come home painfully to Mexican communities on both sides of the border.
Specific Americans fail to see its import and have reacted in a manner most ought to see as convoluted. AP reported that “Intent on securing the vulnerable Arizona border from illegal immigrant crossings, U.S. officials are bracing for what they call a potential new threat this spring: the Minutemen.”
Driven in part by blathering talk shows, these militias form illegally; in their minds they are the Organized Militia written of in the U.S. Constitution. Nearly 500 volunteers have already joined the Minuteman Project, anointing themselves civilian border patrol agents determined to stop the Mexican immigration flow. They plan to patrol the vast stretch of southern borders. These militia members have recruited themselves into bands and often “grant themselves” full military rank like Colonel. They “call-themselves-up for service.” They call it volunteering, where the Constitution makes utterly clear given a particular emergency only the lawful State’s Governor or the President of the United States can legally call-up, “organize,” the un-organized militias of each state.
Clearly these, mostly older, overweight, Christian white males, have failed to do the math as well as read the Constitution. Of the first 1,000 U.S. deaths recorded in Iraq, almost all of them the lower-ranks, poorest-paid and often poorly trained troops, 122 were Latinos, about 70 of them of Mexican descent. Their deaths in a war that most Mexicans strongly oppose. These white militia members patrolling U.S. borders could have at any time joined the fight in Iraq as active duty military, reserves, or joined the 20,000 men who make up private contract security in Iraq (Merc Work).
There are many examples of Mexican youth who have died in Iraq serving this country so as to gain citizenship after having crossed U.S. borders; borders these militia guys intend to police. This past January 12th, one infantryman Sergio Diaz Varela, who fell in Ramadi December 24th, was buried with full military honors in Guadalajara, Mexico, not in the United States. Nine armed troops from Fort Hood, Texas led by General Ken Keene accompanied the young soldier to his final resting-place. U.S. ambassador Tony Garza commended the young Christian man’s soul to God. A full military funeral for a Mexican-born U.S. soldier on Mexican soil.
Craig B Hulet?
Amanda Park, WA