August 12, 2006–Now 26 Canadians have been killed in combat in Afghanistan. It is the largest death toll of all 37 nations participating in the war there, except for the Americans, who have lost 327 soldiers, and the Afghans themselves, of course, whose number of dead is uncounted.

On a national per capita basis, Canada’s rate of blood sacrifice is 80% that of America’s, and more than three times the per capita rate suffered by the combined European deployments to Afghanistan.

The trauma being suffered by the men and women of the Canadian military is further revealed by examining the rate of death per 10,000 soldiers in the military. Canada has so far lost 4.0 soldiers per 10,000 of its total force; by comparison, the US has so far lost 2.8 soldiers per 10,000, or only about 70% of the Canadian rate. All of Europe, including the UK, has lost about one-half of one soldier per 10,000 of its active military forces.

In terms of the size of the military deployment to Afghanistan, the trauma is worse yet. Canada has so far sacrificed 1.3% of its forces deployed to Afghanistan, a rate coming close to that experienced by the Americans in Iraq.

But it is in the rate of death per month by size of deployment where we can fully sense the enormity of the catastrophe that is Canada’s biggest foray into aggressive military action in the 21st century.

Canada only deployed in big numbers to Afghanistan in January of this year, and only began serious operations in March. In the six months since, 18 soldiers have been killed, marking a death rate of 0.15% of the total deployment, per month. By way of comparison, the US has lost soldiers in Afghanistan at a rate of 0.03% of their total deployment to that theatre of war per month since their arrival in the fall of 2001, a rate only one-fifth that of the Canadians. Even in Iraq, US forces have dealt with a rate of death less than one third of the rate of death dealt with by Canadians in Afghanistan—0.04% of the total US deployment to Iraq has, on average, been killed per month during that war.

The Canadian rate of death by size of deployment, per month, is actually approaching to within 80% of the rate of death by size of deployment, per month, reached by Canadian forces in World War II. And in the last month alone, in which 10 Canadians have died, the monthly rate of death by size of deployment to Afghanistan has been more than twice the rate of death experienced by Canadians in World War II.

In fact, should the rate of death continue at present levels for a few more months, the 2006 Canadian campaign in Afghanistan will come to mark the highest price this nation’s military has ever paid in our country’s history, as measured by annual death rate by size of deployment. General Rick Hillier, who oversees the Canadian campaign in Afghanistan, and who, on the eve of his major deployment in January denounced his foes in that country as thugs and murderers, is directing what is soon to become proportionately the bloodiest and most disastrous military campaign ever undertaken by Canada in its 139-year history.

No wonder we haven’t heard much from Mr Hillier lately: he’s busy contemplating the fact he’s in charge of the worst military catastrophe on record—but, of course, he’s not the first commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan to confront that ignominious legacy.

No public reaction yet

Canadians have not reacted to the mounting losses on those foreign fields of battle quite to the degree one might expect of the worst campaign in the nation’s history. That might change when Parliament, like the rest of Canada, comes back from summer vacation and resumes sitting next month. The minority Conservative regime of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has so far relied on the support of the Bloc Quebecois under leader Gilles Duceppe to maintain its tenuous grip on power. Without that support, the government would fall at the first vote of confidence. Duceppe was last seen at the front of a large protest march in Montreal last week angrily shouting denouncements of Harper and his government’s reaction to events in Lebanon. It would appear the Bloc’s support for the Conservatives has come to an end. For his part, Harper has paid dearly in the polls for his offhand remark about Israel’s “measured response” in Lebanon, a price that has only added to his already growing bill for refusing genuine debate about the deployment to Afghanistan, and his ill-advised attempt to hide military funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan from the public and the press. Supporters may rightfully claim that it was the Liberal regime of Jean Chrétien who got us into Afghanistan and Liberal Paul Martin who planned the major increase to our deployment there, but such fine points are lost on a public increasingly unhappy with Canadian foreign policy as a whole, and it’s always the party currently in power that pays for that.

The Conservatives will try to delay a confidence motion as long as possible, but won’t escape October without one. Duceppe has so strongly played to the Quebecois mistrust of federal ambitions in Afghanistan that he can’t now vote in support of the Conservatives and perpetuate their increasingly unpopular war. It may be the softwood lumber deal on which the government falls, or any other matter that comes up for a vote in the House, but the election campaign that follows in November will surely be all about Canada’s Asian misadventure.

Ominously for the Conservatives, there seems nothing on the horizon that will change the scene on the ground in Afghanistan between now and then. The insurgency—or rather, the occupation resistance, which is what a popular insurgency against a foreign power is more properly called, we being the second biggest foreign power involved in perpetuating the occupation of that country—won’t go away.

If Canadians stay on their bases, they are shelled by an endless supply of rockets; if they leave their base and go on patrol, they are struck by snipers and bombers in a seemingly endless supply of white Toyota pick-up trucks. Europeans are not planning new deployments to the country, especially not with a NATO or UN deployment envisioned for Lebanon, and the Americans are, if anything, skedaddling out of there to beef up their own deteriorating position in and around Baghdad.

Between now and mid-November, likely the final crucial week or two in a federal election campaign, the number of Canadian deaths in Afghanistan, at the rate they’re happening now, may well double to over 50 soldiers. Unlike a lot of Americans, Canadians can dis-tinguish between support for our troops and support for our military and political leaders. Harper and his supporters may try what Bush and his supporters routinely get away with by conflating criticism of leaders with lack of support for the grunts, but like all his other imitations of the monkey in the White House, this one would likely fall very flat as well.

Where Washington is held hostage by the chicken-hawks, Ottawa will be increasingly seen by Canadians as held hostage by a more ungainly creature yet, the looney-hawks, led by Gordon O’Conner, Minister of Defence, Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, Peter McKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff, and, of course, Head Looney-hawk of them all, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

With that rate of death, the election campaign will become the debate and referendum Canadians very much wanted but were denied, regarding the major deployment of Canadian forces to Afghanistan. The NDP and Bloc Quebecois will be in a position to make major gains by calling for a Canadian withdrawal. This will without a doubt catch the attention of the Americans who, in their typical ham-fisted ways, will intervene only to strengthen the hand of their opponents and make matters even worse for the Conservatives.

So long as the new Liberal leader (whoever that will be) and NDP leader Jack Layton don’t blow it by saying something stupid like “I love you,” the result by December this year could be a Liberal minority government propped up by a much-enlarged NDP, whose support will be explicitly and vehemently tied to a speedy Canadian retreat out of Afghanistan. Is there a better way to support our troops than to pull them out of that impersonal meat grinder that has efficiently chewed up empires before us?