Quote Originally Posted by ptamas View Post
I vote for the exercise being dangerous cause it produces media/politician friendly numbers.
LOL - I'll second that motion, Peter !

Outside of producing media bite friendly numbers that have no inherent meaning, there are other serious problems with trying to use it in any way to look at Canada's mission in Afghanistan. First off, we aren't the government, so it isn't a COIN situation per se. This impacts on any potential use of a force ratio by reducing the effectiveness of boots on the ground since they have no direct relationship with the (supposedly) legitimate government.

Second, establishing any such ratio in the popular mind of, say, Canadian citizens serves only as some sort of theological benchmark against which to manage expectations of effectiveness. Given that we (Canadians) aren't the Afghan government, that we are only a smallish part of a coalition operation and a whole host of other factors, such a ratio has so much "slop" in it as to be useless.

Cheers,

Marc