thedrifter
01-08-07, 02:55 PM
A Grim harvest
War faces growing opposition
By KEVIN L. CARTER
Tribune Correspondent
On the last day of 2006, Army Spc. Dustin Donica, of Spring, Texas, was killed by small-arms fire in al-Anbar Province, Iraq. He was 22 years old, played soccer on his high school team, had a Myspace.com page and was proud to wear the Airborne tab on his shoulder and the wings of a paratrooper on his chest. He was the 3,000th American serviceperson killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of that country in March 2003.
He was also, like the vast majority of the Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a young white man from middle- or lower-middle-class circumstances who lived in a rural or suburban area.
But there were others who died, like Spc. Prince K. Teewia and 2nd Lt. Emily J.T. Perez, who reflect the changing situation of African Americans, women and immigrants in the U.S. military.
Department of Defense records analyzed by Lt. Col Randy Rotte, an Army War College fellow, show that of the more than 3,000 Americans who were killed in combat in Iraq and the 344 who have died in Afghanistan, slightly less than 10 percent were African-American. The African-American population is about 13 percent of the U.S. population between 18 and 54 years of age, he said.
Latinos made up 11.6 percent of all casualties and are 14.1 of the 18-54 population. Approximately 15 percent of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are women, and about 2 percent of total casualties have been female, according to the Defense Department.
As of December, more than 22,000 servicemen and women had been wounded, Rotte said.
Perez, 23, who came from Oxon Hill, Md., died Sept. 12 while serving in combat operations in southern Iraq near Najaf when a bomb detonated under her Humvee.
She had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 2005, the first African American and Latina to be command sergeant — the highest rank for cadets — at West Point. She was one of the stars of the Army track team, running in the 100-yard dash and the 400-meter relay team. She also sang in the academy’s gospel choir.
Teewia, 27, represented a group — immigrants — whose sacrifice is most often reflected among Latino casualties. But he was African, from Liberia, born during a time when there was much conflict among West Africans.
He emigrated from Liberia to Durham, N.C., in 1998, and had been a student at North Carolina Central University when he enlisted in the Army in March 2004.
A member of the celebrated 101st Airborne Division, Teewia died on Dec. 29, 2005. He had managed to escape the horrific armed conflicts in Liberia only to die as an American serviceman.
The last month of the year was deadly for Americans in combat as at least 111 American servicemen and women were killed in Iraq.
As has been the case in every armed conflict the United States of America has been involved with, African-American soldiers, sailors and airmen have died.
In the case of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, however, there are two major differences. First of all, proportionally fewer African Americans have died in combat in Iraq than whites and Latinos.
According to Rotte, the Army, which has sustained the vast majority of combat deaths, is more than 20 percent African-American, but only about 10 percent of all casualties have been Black men or women. And proportionally more women of all ethnicities have died in the present conflicts than in any other war in American history. Eight American women died in Vietnam, for example. More than 70 have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“A question I had was, if African Americans were overrepresented in the army, why were they only 12 percent of (Army) casualties,” said Rotte, an aviation battalion commander who served a year in Iraq. “What seems to be a reasonable explanation is that in the military there are a lot of specialties. Granted, you could be a cook and still be susceptible to fire. But those most in harm’s way are those in combat arms, and African Americans are only about 15 percent of the combat arms troops.”
Latinos, on the other hand, have sacrificed well out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
Marine Corps statistics bear this out most glaringly, Rotte said. More than 20 percent of combat casualities among Marines have been Latino.
The escalating casualty numbers, the sense that Iraq is spinning out of control, the lack of movement on the capture of Osama bin Laden and general disillusionment with the direction of the war is causing more and more Americans to be against it.
This goes double with African Americans.
According to a 2005 Pew Research poll, African Americans were more than twice as likely to be against the war as whites. And Defense Department statistics show that since the war began, African Americans have not enlisted in the armed forces at the same high rate as before.
Compared to earlier wars, such as World War II and Vietnam, Iraq is very unpopular among African Americans, said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
“This war was George W. Bush’s war, and African Americans were opposed to it from the beginning,” Bositis said. “In 2004, over 70 percent of African Americans were opposed to the war, and I don’t see any way that those numbers could have decreased since then.”
A growing number of veterans of the conflict have spoken out against it and have joined antiwar veterans’ groups. One of these veterans is Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, in West Philadelphia.
Seeing 3,000 service members dead “is heartbreaking,” said Dougherty, who served in the Army in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. “Everyone in my unit came back home, but I have met many families who have lost loved ones, and I have many friends who are physically injured or who have post-traumatic stress disorder. This war has had a huge impact on families and communities.”
The war is not really affecting most Americans, though.
“Only 1 percent of the people either have been there or know someone who has. The same people — the poor, those who do not have other opportunities — are the ones who feel the impact.”
And it has been even worse for Iraqis, who have died by the thousands every month. One study, done by Johns Hopkins University, estimated 650,000 Iraqis have died since the war began. Other estimates are significantly lower and no hard figure has been released by the Pentagon.
“They did not volunteer to have their country invaded and occupied,” Dougherty said. “I cannot see anything positive that has resulted from this war.”
Dougherty says the only real choice the United States should make now is to have a total withdrawal of troops.
“Apart from that, the violence is going to continue. The Iraqi people need the opportunity to work out what is going to happen to their country.”
Ellie
War faces growing opposition
By KEVIN L. CARTER
Tribune Correspondent
On the last day of 2006, Army Spc. Dustin Donica, of Spring, Texas, was killed by small-arms fire in al-Anbar Province, Iraq. He was 22 years old, played soccer on his high school team, had a Myspace.com page and was proud to wear the Airborne tab on his shoulder and the wings of a paratrooper on his chest. He was the 3,000th American serviceperson killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of that country in March 2003.
He was also, like the vast majority of the Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a young white man from middle- or lower-middle-class circumstances who lived in a rural or suburban area.
But there were others who died, like Spc. Prince K. Teewia and 2nd Lt. Emily J.T. Perez, who reflect the changing situation of African Americans, women and immigrants in the U.S. military.
Department of Defense records analyzed by Lt. Col Randy Rotte, an Army War College fellow, show that of the more than 3,000 Americans who were killed in combat in Iraq and the 344 who have died in Afghanistan, slightly less than 10 percent were African-American. The African-American population is about 13 percent of the U.S. population between 18 and 54 years of age, he said.
Latinos made up 11.6 percent of all casualties and are 14.1 of the 18-54 population. Approximately 15 percent of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are women, and about 2 percent of total casualties have been female, according to the Defense Department.
As of December, more than 22,000 servicemen and women had been wounded, Rotte said.
Perez, 23, who came from Oxon Hill, Md., died Sept. 12 while serving in combat operations in southern Iraq near Najaf when a bomb detonated under her Humvee.
She had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 2005, the first African American and Latina to be command sergeant — the highest rank for cadets — at West Point. She was one of the stars of the Army track team, running in the 100-yard dash and the 400-meter relay team. She also sang in the academy’s gospel choir.
Teewia, 27, represented a group — immigrants — whose sacrifice is most often reflected among Latino casualties. But he was African, from Liberia, born during a time when there was much conflict among West Africans.
He emigrated from Liberia to Durham, N.C., in 1998, and had been a student at North Carolina Central University when he enlisted in the Army in March 2004.
A member of the celebrated 101st Airborne Division, Teewia died on Dec. 29, 2005. He had managed to escape the horrific armed conflicts in Liberia only to die as an American serviceman.
The last month of the year was deadly for Americans in combat as at least 111 American servicemen and women were killed in Iraq.
As has been the case in every armed conflict the United States of America has been involved with, African-American soldiers, sailors and airmen have died.
In the case of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, however, there are two major differences. First of all, proportionally fewer African Americans have died in combat in Iraq than whites and Latinos.
According to Rotte, the Army, which has sustained the vast majority of combat deaths, is more than 20 percent African-American, but only about 10 percent of all casualties have been Black men or women. And proportionally more women of all ethnicities have died in the present conflicts than in any other war in American history. Eight American women died in Vietnam, for example. More than 70 have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“A question I had was, if African Americans were overrepresented in the army, why were they only 12 percent of (Army) casualties,” said Rotte, an aviation battalion commander who served a year in Iraq. “What seems to be a reasonable explanation is that in the military there are a lot of specialties. Granted, you could be a cook and still be susceptible to fire. But those most in harm’s way are those in combat arms, and African Americans are only about 15 percent of the combat arms troops.”
Latinos, on the other hand, have sacrificed well out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
Marine Corps statistics bear this out most glaringly, Rotte said. More than 20 percent of combat casualities among Marines have been Latino.
The escalating casualty numbers, the sense that Iraq is spinning out of control, the lack of movement on the capture of Osama bin Laden and general disillusionment with the direction of the war is causing more and more Americans to be against it.
This goes double with African Americans.
According to a 2005 Pew Research poll, African Americans were more than twice as likely to be against the war as whites. And Defense Department statistics show that since the war began, African Americans have not enlisted in the armed forces at the same high rate as before.
Compared to earlier wars, such as World War II and Vietnam, Iraq is very unpopular among African Americans, said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
“This war was George W. Bush’s war, and African Americans were opposed to it from the beginning,” Bositis said. “In 2004, over 70 percent of African Americans were opposed to the war, and I don’t see any way that those numbers could have decreased since then.”
A growing number of veterans of the conflict have spoken out against it and have joined antiwar veterans’ groups. One of these veterans is Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, in West Philadelphia.
Seeing 3,000 service members dead “is heartbreaking,” said Dougherty, who served in the Army in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. “Everyone in my unit came back home, but I have met many families who have lost loved ones, and I have many friends who are physically injured or who have post-traumatic stress disorder. This war has had a huge impact on families and communities.”
The war is not really affecting most Americans, though.
“Only 1 percent of the people either have been there or know someone who has. The same people — the poor, those who do not have other opportunities — are the ones who feel the impact.”
And it has been even worse for Iraqis, who have died by the thousands every month. One study, done by Johns Hopkins University, estimated 650,000 Iraqis have died since the war began. Other estimates are significantly lower and no hard figure has been released by the Pentagon.
“They did not volunteer to have their country invaded and occupied,” Dougherty said. “I cannot see anything positive that has resulted from this war.”
Dougherty says the only real choice the United States should make now is to have a total withdrawal of troops.
“Apart from that, the violence is going to continue. The Iraqi people need the opportunity to work out what is going to happen to their country.”
Ellie