Australian soldiers are busy at work in Afghanistan soon to be joined by more comrades. By all accounts they are doing well the job they have been assigned. Whether on patrol, in generally low-unit engagements with an elusive enemy, or even in civil work, the job is very dangerous. Men are being killed. And wounded.

And to very little military purpose. Whatever ultimately happens in Afghanistan and right at the moment we seem to know more about what we do not want than what we do it is unlikely that anything Australian soldiers will have done will have made a difference one way or another. Our contributions and our sacrifices are far too small for us to have any say in the higher military councils or the higher political councils of the war.

As with Australian involvement in Korea and Vietnam, and even in the Second World War, all of the strategic and political decisions, even ones vitally affecting our long-term national interests, are being made in forums in which we have minimal involvement and influence, except, sometimes and even then often more by way of afterthought when the hunger of our politicians for public relations recognition of their sacrifice is needed or when they need to be stroked so as to get them, in the higher interests of the war, to put more of our men in harm's way.

If we have as sometimes we do a degree of local tactical control or responsibility for a piece of ground, Australians may have some choices about how our men die. But even then they will die in the fairly certain knowledge that no local victory however hard-won or stalemate often equally hard-won or humiliating and bloody defeat will affect the grand strategic picture. Or the outcome.

For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times