The US military is recruiting young Hispanics to fight it’s war in Iraq, with as many as 30,000 of the 150,000 troops deployed being Latino, many being deployed on front lines. It is estimated that up to 20% of all casualties in Iraq are Hispanic. In 2003, just after the Iraq war, John McLaurin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Human Resources commented on the need “to boost the Latino numbers in the military from roughly 10 per cent to as much as 22 per cent”, whilst speaking about the size of the “Hispanic … recruiting market”. With more than one-third of all Hispanics under 18 years of age; a high school dropout rate of 40% and high rates of incarceration in prison many Hispanics see little hope for the future. That is why many have been lured with promises of assistance and university scholarships, with even non-citizens being promised Green cards after serving in the Army.
This echoes the situation of black people fighting in the US army during previous wars. Whilst they were on the front lines, their fellow brethren were still being discriminated against back home. One such infamous comment came from a black soldier serving in World War 2 fighting against Japan who said “just carve on my tombstone, here lies a Black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man”.
The demonstrations by thousands of Latinos have raised the question; if America treats people on it’s doorstep with such disdain, how can one expect it to treat other people around the world, such as in Iraq? For all the mantra of ‘Human Rights’, the spreading of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’ the reality is America sees both Humans and scare resources as nothing more than tradable commodities, their value determined by their intrinsic properties. Yet it is not only America that treats immigrants and other minorities with such contempt. All over Europe and Australia we are seeing ever increasing hostility towards migrants, particularly Muslims. In France the riots in late 2005 were symptomatic of the despair and treatment of it’s Muslim minority who make up 10% of it’s population. In Germany the large Turkish community has no citizenship rights and are regarded as ‘guest workers’. Australia has similarly seen recent race related violence with politicians declaring, in a deliberate attack on Muslims, that there is no place for those that do not adapt to the Australian ‘way’ of life. In Britain, one in four would vote for the far right British National Party and its racist agenda.
