Posted on 07/20/2005 1:08:09 PM PDT by neverdem
WHICH American communities pay the highest price for the war in Iraq? A look at the demographics of soldiers killed reveals that Iraq is not the war of any one race or region. Rather, it is rural America's war.
Altogether, a nearly equal percentage of Americans aged 18 to 54 live in counties with a million or more inhabitants as live in counties of 100,000 or fewer. And yet, of the soldiers who have died in Iraq, 342 came from densely populated counties while 536 came from smaller ones. Derived from Pentagon and census data, this chart shows the Iraqi war death rates for every 100,000 people ages 18 to 54 by the size of their county's population.
The difference is visible not just in the size of a soldier's county of origin, but also in its location. Counties disconnected from urban areas tend to have higher death rates, regardless of population size. Small rural counties have a death rate nearly twice that of counties that have the same population but happen to be part of metropolitan areas.
Why should this be? It's not that Iraqi insurgents are singling out rural soldiers, or that commanders are putting them at particular risk. Rather, the armed forces themselves must be disproportionately drawn from rural communities - a fact not immediately discernible from recruitment data, which report the race, age and education of recruits, but not their home counties.
This is above all an economics story. Military studies consistently find that a poor economy is a boon to recruiting. The higher rate of deaths from rural counties likely reflects sparse opportunities for young people in those places.
When the Iraq war memorials go up in years to come, these monuments to heroism and sacrifice will be found less often in thriving urban centers...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Red Counties - Blue Counties
Comparisons with Vietnam are really not accurate. That was a war against a tough enemy who were causing hundreds of dead/wounded per month. In September 1968, there were over 2100 dead.
The terrorists who occasionally are blowing things up in no way compare to the NVA. This is in large measure why we can get away with occupying the country with a volunteer force where the gals are serving in uniform while "George P" is at law school.
Ok, this post is full of stereotypes that I don't even know if I should dignify this with a response, but alas I will
First, despite what a bunch of morons with their own various reasons would have you believe, the word "urban" is not synoynmous with "minorities".
Urban is simply a description given to a certain type of organization of society, namely that of the focus city of any given metropolitan area.
And for the belief that rural soldiers would always be European-American, to this I say
Macon County, AL approximately 24,000 residents. 85% black
Issaquena County, MS approximately 2,200. 62% black
And, if you want to really get rural
Kenedy County, TX, approximately 400 people, 79% hispanic.
Better and faster medical care.
Wanna bet that the original story concept or assignment was to prove that it was poor blacks who were bearing a disproportionate burden by acting as cannon fodder, and that the reporters and editors were miffed that the data did not support their preconceptions? No doubt they were then faced with the typical New York Times dilemma - do we resort to the outright lie and go ahead with the original story line even though it is not supported by the facts, or do we huddle for a few moments and devise a different way to spin the facts in a way that is still calculated to do maximum damage by portraying the United States as a land of limited opportunity and no hope...
whatta farce! since when have urban "intellectuals" given a damn about rural people?
Uh, I hate to bust your bubble, but there are many of poor blacks in rural counties. For example, the Black Belt of Alabama, and the general region of the Mississippi Delta. I don't think the argument can be made that Lowndes County is somehow a pillar of urban sophistication by any means.
Exactly!!! The NYT would NEVER think of this. Class warfare is the only warfare the Times is familiar with personally. How very ignorant.
As an aside, since you seem to be fluent regarding demography, is there a major urban area aside from Salt Lake City where the average young man is likely to be white?
We at the New York Times Company know nothing about the military other than that we loathe it. From deep within that cocoon of ignorance we offer the following half-baked nonsense:
Nashville and Jacksonville immediately come to mind.
One addition, according the the U.S Census Bureau, Kennedy County is majority white.
If you want to go for "white" in the traditional sense of "white", the correct term is European-American.
I only did ten years in the Corps...most of that in the infantry. I can only tell you what I saw, which was white kids join for adventure, most inner city minority kids join to get job skills.
Why are they using counties? Many cities or urban areas cover several counties. If scan counties listed by pop in 2000 you'll find a lot of cities in the 500,000 to 1 million category which might explain the dip in the deaths. (http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t29/tab03a.pdf)
Hate to burst your bubble, but there are whites in the "inner city"
Being white doesn't automatically mean you are rural or suburban, just as being black doesnt automatically mean you live in a housing project in the ghetto.
All inner city means is downtown, and area immediately adjacent to downtown. Someone else said this about their city and the same goes for mine, most of the problems you see here are in the areas just outside the "inner-city", basically, the middle to outer city.
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