Warfare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Warfare - Essay Example reader, the fact of the matter is that the data is incomplete and necessarily causes the reviewer/analyst to misinterpret the situation that is being represented. As a means of understanding the way in which this together situation is misrepresented, the analysis will engage the reader with discussion of some of the core drawbacks that exist within the research at hand. Without question, the war in Afghanistan is an issue that still engenders a great deal of societal debate; however, instead of delving into this debate in seeking to take sides, the author will instead leverage the information that is represented within the article, and the article alone, as a means of drawing inference upon whether or not statistics and data are valid for making the points at hand. Firstly, it should be noted that the data charts that are represented in the opening tables of the article do not represent the number of civilian deaths between 2001 and 2007. This is an unimaginable oversight. Ultimately, the bloodiest years of any conflict or invasion are those at the very beginning of such an action. Whereas it is of course laudable that the authors intended to track the state at all, the overall level of inference that the reader can gain from statistics that only begin tracking civilian deaths in late 2007 is greatly diminished. Furthermore, the article does not begin tracking ‘ground engagements’ until 2011 (Zenko, 2014). As can be understood, the nation of Afghanistan is extraordinarily poor. Thus, it is not expected that terrorists or other groups will utilise advanced weaponry and/or the Air Force as a means of engaging targets. By extension, it can also be assumed that the ‘invaders’ of Afghanistan, namely NATO, heavily utilise a ir power in lieu of ground engagements due to the fact that air assault of enemy forces has a lower overall likelihood of causing coalition causalities. A further issue that encourages the reader to question the veracity and usefulness of