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September 19, 2006
The new alternative
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has some questions:
• Why are Canadian troops suffering a disproportionately higher [sic] number of military deaths than our NATO allies?
• Canada has taken on a very dangerous mission and is shouldering an unfair burden in the coalition. Why that is ... we don't have an answer for that yet.
A few unscientific suggestions, just off the top of my head:
• Because as has been repeatedly driven home by the current, former, and former-but-one Prime Ministers, Canada is taking a leading role in the mission, in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan.
• Because the Canadian force is disproportionately made up of ground troops, while both the British and the Americans have significant air forces in Afghanistan. It seems logical to me that a ground force in combat would suffer heavier casualties than the guys in the planes giving them cover.
• Because a dusty, sun-parched counter-insurgency campaign against arguably the world's fiercest warriors is the wrong place to look for proportionality (or indeed any kind of pleasing statistical logic).
I have a couple of questions for the CCPA, should any of its members be browsing past: One nation has to have the highest per-capita casualty rate in every conflict — my calculations show that to be true even in South Lebanon or Darfur. So if the mission is valid, then why shouldn't that nation be Canada? And if the nation isn't valid, which you guys appear to believe, then isn't it totally beside the point even to be discussing relative casualty rates among coalition members?
UPDATE, hours later: Don't bother reading this post. Wonderdog did far more work on this than I did. See also Prairie Wrangler.
Posted by Chris Selley at September 19, 2006 08:31 PM
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Comments
Great post. I raised other objections to the "study" on my blog yesterday (http://prairiewrangler.blogspot.com/2006/09/centre-for-policy-alternatives-bunk.html), mainly based on the fact that the statistics extrapolated into 2009 were only from the past 6 months, which included the most offensive and dangerous mission during the Afghan campaign, wrongly assuming that this level of casualties will necessarily continue. It's a brutal study, totally consistent with the CCPA's apparent mandate to disqualify themselves as a legitimate "think tank". Wonderdog has a good post on this too, with a far more impressive objection than mine.
Posted by: Olaf at September 19, 2006 09:46 PM