Why is Canada Leaving Afghanistan Now?

Paul Martin deployed Canadians to Kandahar in 2005. So why are we leaving now? Have we accomplished our goals? Or has the burden of war become too great to bear? Stephen Harper claims both conditions exist; we have accomplished our goals at the same time that the mission became too much of a burden for the military to continue. I would like to examine both rationales.

1) According to Harper, Afghanistan no longer represents "a geo-strategic risk to the world. It is no longer a source of global terrorism.” That may be true now but I would suggest it was just as true before the Canadian mission in Kandahar started. The geo-strategic risk of global terrorism once posed by Afghanistan was the Taliban running a country where terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda were free to operate without state interference. As soon as the Taliban was deposed back in 2001, this goal was essentially achieved. Now, there were still good humanitarian reasons for remaining in Afghanistan after 2001 and there is still an ongoing need for NATO to maintain the capability to strike at terrorist bases that are discovered in Afghanistan (and Pakistan), but the unique danger created by the Taliban government was essentially eliminated five years before the Kandahar mission started.

 

2) When Harper was giving his speech this week on the end of the Canadian combat mission in Afghanistan this week, he noted that Canadian troops have been in combat roles in Afghanistan longer than the two world wars combined. That is not yet true, but even if it was the comparison would still be spurious.

144 Canadian Forces personnel have died in Afghanistan since the Kandahar mission started. Since September 2010, only three Canadians have died in Afghanistan, a number which includes one suspected suicide. In contrast, a total of 113,633 Canadians died in the two world wars. So, if we were to use 'number of deaths' to compare Afghanistan to the world wars instead of 'duration' then we would find that Canada has only lost 1.3% as much as it did in those two wars. That means Canada would have to stay in Afghanistan for approximately another 750 years before it matched the losses in WWI and WWII.

Of course, we should not expect or allow the military to suffer the same sorts of casualties as it did in the world wars; the point is that it is absurd to compare the two of them to Afghanistan.

I believe the real reason Canada is leaving Afghanistan is public opinion. If my suspicion that polls are driving the decision to end the combat mission is correct then I guess we at least have some form of democratic government in that it represents the wishes of the people. On the other hand, it would also imply that the government cannot be upfront about its decision-making process, which is lamentably undemocratic.

As a bonus to the Harper government, shutting down the Afghanistan combat mission will prevent any more pesky detainee abuse scandals from occurring. That's just good politics.