A well balanced analysis:

- not only reflecting the credible assessment of scholars concerning the Afghan deadend

- but probably similar to the accurate and downbeat military and ONA assessments about the Afghan situation that are never made public...

http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-general-caldwell-orders-men-to-con.html

Pete

Get the hell out of Afghanistan!

We have no business being there.
If the people cant fight their would-be oppressors as they have in the past then they are entitled to oppressive lives. Those brave hearts who could have fought for the freedom of Afghanistan are hiding out here and elsewhere in the world.

As I have said before in other posts, what needs to be remembered is the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal acts. No UN authority was given or would have been given with the facts as they stood and still remain.

9/11 was a criminal act and as such should have been solved through international criminal courts after all of the evidence was assessed and those responsible identified and hopefully apprehended.

This did not occur. Bush, through Cheney, pushed into both of these countries based on a range of lies and misinformation. Australia, an ally of the U.S., by proxy, joined in the so-called 'noble fight'.

It is long past the time when our troops should have been brought home. The should never have been involved in the first place

The problems in Afghanistan are tribal in nature, it won't matter how long or how much money is spent, this country will fracture and return to its oppressive tribal ways.

Like Vietnam, Afghanistan will be another political, economic and military failure in our history books, a travesty for all the brave Australian and other nations lives lost.

U.S. hegemony at its worst.

Reflecting on Australia's role in Afghanistan is an overdue exercise. The so-called "debate" in the Australian Parliament in October 2010 was a travesty. There appears to be a profound reluctance to actually address the origins of the current Afghan war. Rather, too many commentators, including Mr Dunn accept the official propaganda about the "al qaeda" attack on 9/11 etc. In fact as has been exhaustively documented, the Bush regime determined on an attack on Afghanistan in June 2001 when negotiations over the pipeline from the Caspian Basin through Afghanistan broke down and the Afghan government signed a contract with Bridas Corp of Argentina.
Even if the fairy tale of 9/11 were true it would still not have justified the attack. International law is very clear on the circumstances in which one country may attack another and the so-called 9/11 attacks don't even come close. See the article "Why Australia's Presence in Afghanistan is Untenable" published in the peer reviewed Journal of 9/11 Studies February 2010.
In short, Australia is participating in an illegal war. If we still believed in the principle of accountability for wrongdoing (which we subscribed to at Nuremburg) then John Howard and his successors would be in the dock in The Hague.
Instead we have one miserable foreign excursion after another, each attaching us more firmly than the previous one to American coattails. One might have thought that exposure of the lies that lead us into Vietnam and Iraq, to name but two examples, the population might have become more demanding of its political leaders. Rather we have a supine population readily lead by an equally supine media (including the so-called alternative media) who are vigorous only in their avoidance of asking and answering the real questions.