Exit, Stage Right

As I write this, the last of Canada's mission to Afghanistan are back home.  At 12+ years it is our longest war, even though the intense period (2006-2011) puts us in the same ballpark as WW2. 

Is Afghanistan better off than in 2001? Without question. The questions come in when you look at the prognosis for stability, and that isn't great. We did what we could, more than Afghanistan has ever done for us, and anyone who expects more than that can do it themselves. Hopefully enough Afghans have something to lose now and will fight to keep their gains, but time will tell.

What separates Afghanistan from our previous expeditionary wars is the casualty rate.  We lost 158 dead and several hundred (unpublished) seriously wounded: that's one bad Battalion attack in either World War and a large fraction of our losses in Korea over a much shorter period.

Each of those losses is a tragedy for individuals, but the scale makes a negligible impact on the fabric of Canadian society; the Army was at war, the Country wasn't.  The frequent question is "Was it worth it?".  I don't know the calculus of nation-building, so I can just hope that more people were helped than were hurt.  Some will regret going due to injuries or loss of friends, but the CA is a professional volunteer force, and nobody was forced to go.  It was, for lack of a more sensitive word, an adventure for many of us, and indeed what we signed up to do.

Afghanistan has profoundly changed both the Canadian Army and the public's relationship with us, and I hope that goodwill remains.  The public is fickle however, and there is nothing new about it:

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

RIP to my comrades fallen in Afghanistan, and the best possible recovery to those who came home wounded in body and/or mind. Lest we forget.