Yeah!.....and Israel has all three.......just not to the same person at any one time!

While the author's reasons for exiting Afghanistan are rather convoluted and self-serving, nonetheless I'd agree its time to get out.

The reasons for going into Afghanistan were entirely legitimate and valid. But staying was a strategic error. Remember that at that time there was still the after-glow of the hope that the defeat of the Soviet empire might allow for a new world order to be established where co-operating great powers enforced human rights universally. So the US decided to hang around and help the Afghans establish their democracy. It was an error born of false hope and failed to understand that these people are so mired in their moribund anti-humanism that democracy or even basic decency are unattainable.

A better policy would have been to go in, flatten anything that the Soviets had missed, scatter and remove whatever government persisted replacing it with something that stood some chance of success, and then piss off - with the warning that the sheer hint that terrorists were being offered protection would result in regular visitations by the odd couple of hundred cruise missiles.

We (the west) don't leave now because we don't want to admit that lives were sacrificed to a losing proposition. So we hang around hoping the justify those lost lives.

The US can make its own arrangements but Australia, if led by someone who could see past the next poll, could simply advise that we we've had enough and leave, vowing to, as best we can, insulate ourselves from the Afghan plague by cutting all ties with that God-forsaken race.

You've gotta laugh however that the solution offered by the author is to just give a few warlords a few hundred million to carry on the fight. Struth, Bush was naive but that idea beats all.

But what could go wrong? After all, who ever heard of corruption among the Afghan hierarchy? No chance at all that a large part will be siphoned off to purchase the best of the Bacha Bai boys for our loyal warlords. No chance that the Swiss accounts will be working overtime. Wow.