Critics say mission too much defense, too little diplomacy
By Kim Barker | Chicago Tribune correspondent
July 18, 2008
BOWMANVILLE, Canada — Near the corner of Temperance and Church Streets, a granite monument honors this town's dead soldiers and lists where they died.
But when Darryl Caswell was killed by a roadside bomb last year in Afghanistan, no one was sure how to add his death, the town's 103rd military fatality but the first one in 43 years. Town leaders had planned to etch the word "peacekeeping" above his name, but to many in Bowmanville, a town of 31,000 east of Toronto, that description of Canada's role fighting with NATO in Afghanistan seemed wrong.
"I don't see where the peacekeeping comes in," said Paul Caswell, Darryl's father.
The war in Afghanistan has changed the way Canadians view war and their military — and in some ways, themselves and the U.S., their mighty neighbor to the south. After Canada declined to participate in the Iraq conflict, a decision to send up to 2,500 troops at a time to the bloodiest part of Afghanistan has transformed Canada from a nation proud of its peacekeeping missions to a nation figuring out how to be at war ...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-canada-afghan_barkerjul18,0,4788978.story