On Tuesday, Canada officially ended its combat mission in Afghanistan. It should never have started.

The war has been a dismal failure. It did not achieve its primary aim of capturing or killing terror chief Osama Bin Laden. A U.S. assassination squad operating in Pakistan finally did that.

Nor has it defeated the Taliban. As Canadian and other NATO-led troops prepare for their final 2014 withdrawal, the insurgents remain dangerous, active and unbowed.

They will almost certainly be playing a role in government again — probably soon.

The war did not bring stability or meaningful democracy to Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai heads a notoriously corrupt government. He and Afghan’s parliament are at loggerheads. Lawlessness is rampant.

Schools have been built. But in many cases, families are too afraid to send their children to them.

Billions of dollars have flowed into Afghanistan for aid and military spending. Yet as a recent report for the U.S. Senate noted, much of that money — by siphoning off skilled workers from the productive economy (it’s more lucrative to be an NGO chauffeur than an engineer) — has made matters worse.

For Canada, the lessons of Afghanistan should be sobering.

This ill-contrived adventure has cost the lives of 161 Canadians, including 157 soldiers.

As well, at least 615 Canadian soldiers have been wounded in battle, many seriously.

Politicians and media lavishly praise our troops for their bravery and professionalism. Yet, ironically, this has made it easier for the country to gloss over the fact that these sacrifices were largely pointless.

Had our military been made up of draftees rather than volunteers, there would be more public anger.

For taxpayers, the cost of the Afghan war so far is $11.3 billion and climbing. That figure excludes ongoing health and disability costs for soldiers wounded in the war.

Two main lessons should be drawn from this conflict.

The first has to do with NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up 62 years ago as a mutual defence pact designed to protect the nations of Western Europe and North America from Soviet Russia.

But since the end of the Cold War, NATO has morphed into an aggressive alliance willing to engage in armed combat far beyond the boundaries of the North Atlantic.

The new NATO sometimes gets the imprimatur of the United Nations for its adventures, as it did in Afghanistan or, more recently, Libya.

Sometimes, as in NATO’s 1999 attack on Serbia, it does not.

But the point of the alliance has been lost. In the aftermath of the Afghanistan failure, Canada would be wise to redirect NATO to its original purpose of mutual defence.

If we can’t accomplish that, we should quit the alliance. We already have the NORAD defence treaty with the U.S. to protect North America from attack. We don’t need to be drawn into any more wars in Asia and North Africa.

The second lesson has to do with the treatment of war. It is not a game. Nor is it simply diplomacy by other means. It is a dangerous, murderous business with a habit of backfiring.

During the Afghan War, too many Canadian politicians forgot that. So did media that, for too long, were dominated by jingoes.

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We talk about the nobility of sacrifice but our motives were not noble. We sent our soldiers to die in Kandahar mainly to impress our largest trading partner, the U.S., and ensure that the border stayed open for trade.

Canadians were killed to guarantee just-in-time delivery of auto parts. That is not sufficient reason.

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

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