general waste ! what a waste of lives and more.

Hugh White's article is about Australia's war in Afghanistan. It could be about any of  the  other "allies" in this war on a poor people. A war that has killed  so many.   So many more than just the  uncounted  'legal', Military Age Males that were 'justifiably' killed . Was the slaughter of women and children ,their displacement and the total destruction of their country a price worth extracting? Especially for what is, so obviously, a Defeat   

                                   
               WAR MEMORIAL AUSTRALIA: MEMORIAL TO ANOTHER LOST WAR.   

THIS year the Australian Defence Force will pull out of Afghanistan's Oruzgan Province without having achieved the objectives for which it was sent. That means Australia's military operation in Afghanistan has failed. It is important to face this uncomfortable fact and learn from it what we can.

Do not expect this from government, the opposition or the ADF. They will all keep saying our soldiers are coming home because their mission has been successfully achieved. That is simply false and they all know it to be false.

Of course none of these failures are Australia's alone, because we have been part of an American-led coalition. And as many people understand, this is the real reason the government sent our forces to Afghanistan and have kept them there - to support our ally. And the real reason we are leaving is that they are leaving.

But they are leaving not just because they are sick of the war and no longer believe it can be ''won''. They are leaving because they have new strategic priorities - especially in Asia. And here is the final source of our failure in Afghanistan. We sent forces there to bolster our alliance with the US, just as we have been sending them to every American conflict in the Middle East for decades. We did that because when Asia was at peace this was what America expected of us.

But now all that is changing. America no longer cares much what we have done in Afghanistan, because it now sees China as its biggest strategic challenge. Today it judges Australia's worth as an ally by the support we provide it against China - politically as the two giants jockey for influence, and militarily if they come to blows. The depth of our failure in Afghanistan is that our service and sacrifice there has already become irrelevant to the alliance it was supposed to support. Even tougher tests lie ahead.

Hugh White is professor of strategic studies at ANU's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/afghanistan-mission-a-total-failure-20130204-2duf0.html#ixzz2JwI6GLvv