Friday, July 25, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Checking Out Obama's Claim of Europe's 'Serious Losses' in Afghanistan

“Americans have a tendency to characterize Europeans as effete or unwilling to shoulder the necessary burdens for freedom when you’ve got a lot of coalition forces in Afghanistan who have taken serious losses,” Obama said.

Every soldier’s death is tragic, but if the number of European soldiers KIA in Afghanistan can truly be characterized as “serious losses,” then no European country will ever really be willing to do peacekeeping work in any dangerous part of the world. (And oddly, safe parts of the world don’t need peacekeepers.)

The European country with the most casualties by far is Great Britain; their forces have suffered 111 fatalities, and upwards of 900 combat injuries of varying degree. Of those deaths, 68 are classified KIA and eight are attributed to “injuries sustained from Action.” (Other deaths include accidents, non-combat incidents, etc.)

Let’s include Canada as part of this exercise, even though they’re not technically Europeans. They have had 88 fatalities, 75 of which are attributed to “hostile circumstances,” which includes bombs, etc.

The next highest are Germany (25 fatalities, 14 KIA); Spain (23 fatalities, 4, but this total does not include 62 who died in a plane crash returning from the region); Netherlands (16 fatalities, 11 KIA); Denmark (16 fatalities, 15 in “hostile engagement,” the highest proportional to the national population); France (12 fatalities, 9 KIA) and Italy (12 fatalities, 7 KIA). Beyond that, casualties of the past seven years include seven Romanians, five Polish, three Czech, three Estonian, three Norwegian, two Hungarian, two Portuguese, two Swedish, one Finnish, and one Lithuanian. Most of these countries have been active in the country since 2001.

Again, each death is a tragedy, but a country that deems twenty-five or fewer deaths in a war zone over seven years to be “serious losses” (usually spurring national debate about continuing participation in the mission) is not capable of serious peacekeeping.

Yes, these countries have much smaller militaries. But the countries on this list range in size from Germany's 285,000 active-duty troops to Denmark's 23,000 troops (all numbers from Wikipedia; if these numbers are erroneous or outdated, let me know). The United States has about five times as many active-duty troops as Germany, but has had nineteen times as many casualties. In Afghanistan, the U.S. has lost 488 soldiers, 345 for hostile action.)

Troop commitments from these countries as of June range from the UK's 8,530 to Austria's 2. Top contributors include Germany's 3,370, Italy's 2,350, France's 1,670, the Netherlands' 1,770, Poland's 1,140 and Spain's 800, not counting non-European allies Canada (2500) and Australia (1100).

The U.S. has committed 23,550.

Germany has 1 percent of its active duty troops in Afghanistan. Tiny Denmark has 3 percent. The United States has 1.6 percent, but our forces do patrol a bigger neighborhood and are a little busy on multiple fronts right now.

When a country is unwilling to risk the lives of its troops where al-Qaeda and the Taliban operate, is it really that unfair to call them "unwilling to shoulder the necessary burdens"?

07/25 11:42 AM Share