Following Yglesias

Any commentary on Pakistan's part in the Bin Laden operation that does not use the word 'India' is missing the point completely.

Pakistan has different goals and different preoccupations from the USA. This isn't rocket science (which, of course, Pakistan also has).

Australia has adopted a stance where our willingness to take on America's goals sight unseen is part of our foreign policy settings. I can't quite see why, but it does mean that any discussion of Australia's goals in Afghanistan is utterly pointless. We don't have any. Discussions of the chance of success in this war - as in Vietnam, as in Iraq - have no relevance to Australian policy, except in that if the chances of success are zero and the whole thing is obviously a cataclysmic fuckup then our obsequious attachment to the fuckup signals our commitment to the US even more clearly and therefore allows us to get more of whatever it hypothetically is that we gain from this master/client relationship.