Profiling the War Dead

With the rampant anti-immigrant and anti-nonwhite hysteria sweeping around within the GOP base, an article in the Los Angeles Times that examines the war dead from California shows how nasty and obscene this anti-immigrant bigotry truly is when exposed to the light of day. While wearing their religion on their sleeves and touting intolerant hate-based "family values," the Christianist who make up the core of today's Republican Party are hypocrites and anything but true Christians. As the article illustrates, more than ten percent (10%) of California's war dead were immigrants who obviously were not here to steal the jobs of whites or subvert America. Rather they came to strive for a better life and paid the ultimate price out of their devotion to this country. It is most sad that these young people gave their lives for a nation that the Christianists believe belongs only to them. Both these Christianists through their war mongering and mindless support of the Chimperator and the Chimperator himself have a great deal of blood on their hands. Here are a few highlights:

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Nearly 500 Californians have lost their lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 58 were immigrants; more than 160 were parents and left behind more than 300 children. One descended from two presidents; another was a Guatemalan street orphan taken in by a U.S. family as a teenager. A database of California's war dead will be available Sunday at latimes.com.

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At age 7, Victor H. Toledo-Pulido was smuggled from Mexico through rugged mountains into California. He and another soldier were killed in May 2007 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle southeast of Baghdad. "They judge us, and they say we just come to take their jobs and positions, but we also make sacrifices. Victor worked since he was little, in the fields and in restaurants," his mother, Maria Gaspar, said after the 22-year-old was killed. "He was Mexican, but he thought like an American. And he gave his life for this country."

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Dozens more were the children of immigrants, including Bunny Long, 22, a Marine lance corporal whose parents came from Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned them for four years in a labor camp."This is our home," Sim Long said after his son was killed in March 2006 by a suicide car bomber in Fallouja, west of Baghdad. "I'm very proud that Bunny was able to give back to his country. Our country."

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No high school has lost more young men -- six -- than Buchanan High in the Central Valley town of Clovis. Another Clovis soldier killed in Iraq went to Clovis High. The city's population is about 83,000. The median age of those killed was 23. There were 402 casualties under age 30. Fifteen were older than 40.

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The bulk of The Times' analysis is based on original reporting compiled since late 2001, including more than 420 obituaries written by Times staff writers. The findings were used to create a database that includes information including the service member's high school, marital status, number of children and place of burial. It also notes, when known, that a person was born outside of the U.S. or was a first-generation American.