For Australia in Afghanistan, victory was never an option --- From the time that George Bush committed hundreds of thousands of troops, hundreds of billions of dollars and the focus of Washington’s military and political brains to invading and occupying Iraq and left a relatively small number of forces to conduct a holding operation in Afghanistan, any possibility of victory flew out the window. Technology is wonderful but mass has its own attractions, and except for a brief period during the surge, the coalition never had sufficient mass to address the multiple problems that beset Afghanistan. -- But in Afghanistan, the opposite of victory is not defeat. The Afghanistan of 2014 will be different to that of 2001. It won’t be a model of democracy and was never going to be. Government control is not going to reach to every corner of Afghanistan and never was. Corruption is not going to go away and it was unrealistic to even begin to assume that it was. - More, Rodger Shanahan - Guardian