For Canadians, the war we are desperate to forget is finally over.

The Canadian flag was lowered in Kabul Wednesday. The approximately 100 Canadian troops remaining in Afghanistan began their long journey home.

There were no marching bands, no flowers, no cheering throngs.

Journalists present were told that, for security reasons, they could not report on the event until it was well over. Afghanistan is still that dangerous.

In Ottawa, the denouement to Canada’s 12-year involvement in the Afghan War produced a government response so low-key as to be almost invisible.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose to be in Vancouver promoting his recently signed free-trade deal with South Korea.

He did manage to issue a press release praising the troops.

And that was it — the Last Post for the longest war Canada has ever waged.

From the start, the Afghan War was a misguided enterprise. It was begun in haste and prosecuted with little thought as to consequences.

Ostensibly a war of self-defence, it was entered into with gusto by the U.S. and its allies after the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York. But eventually and inexorably, it bogged down.

The initial war aim, to capture Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden in his Afghan lair, was never achieved. Bin Laden was eventually found not in Afghanistan but in a posh Pakistani suburb.

He was killed not by NATO battalions scouring caves but by a handful of U.S. Navy Seals acting on intelligence.

Meanwhile, as the war ground on, its rationale shifted.

Sometimes Ottawa said Canadian troops were there to defeat Taliban “scumbags.”

Sometimes it said they were there to prevent terrorists from attacking us here at home.

Sometimes it said they were there to better the lot of Afghan women.

No government had clean hands. A Liberal government committed Canadian battle troops to Kandahar, in Afghanistan’s deadly south.

A Conservative government, with Liberal backing, kept them there for five years.

Canadian troops fought bravely. They are a well-trained and professional force.

But they were ill-served by political masters who could never quite figure out why we were in this particular war.

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At times, it seemed as if Canada were taking part simply to burnish its political credentials within NATO.

When Canada’s soldiers came home, the government thanked them by cutting their pensions.

Many wars are popular in the beginning. Canada’s initial reaction to the Afghan adventure was one of pride and patriotism.

Those who dared to question any part of the war were labelled pro-Taliban traitors.

When the New Democrats eventually called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, their then leader, Jack Layton, was dismissed by media jingos as Taliban Jack.

But eventually, reality began to sink in. Nothing in Afghanistan was cut and dried. The good guys weren’t always good. The bad guys were, in some parts of the country, surprisingly popular.

If we were there to protect women, why was the Afghan government we backed passing laws to suppress them?

If we were there to help the Afghans, why did so many seem to hate us?

Then the Americans abruptly reversed course, announcing their support for a political settlement with the very Taliban they had chased from office.

Democratic societies are willing to go to war if there is a reason. But after a decade of fighting, the rationale for this war dissolved in confusion.

Which brings us to Wednesday and Canada’s final flag-lowering in Kabul. Over 12 years, 158 Canadian soldiers have been killed and 2,179 injured in Afghanistan. The United Nations reports that over only part of that period, at least 14,064 Afghan civilians have been killed, mainly by insurgents.

It is a grim tally for a pointless war.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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