At $10bn a month, and an increasing number of US casualties, the American people need to ask whether staying in Afghanistan until December 2014 is worth it.

Afghans themselves are making clear that this latest episode is but the trigger for underlying grievances about a decade-old, extremely violent foreign military presence in their country.

The end of a war that is in its eleventh year and that has brought nothing but mass slaughter and destruction could be brought nearer by US soldiers burning copies of the Koran.

After 10 years of at least $3.5 billion of humanitarian aid and $58 billion of development assistance, how could children be dying of something as predictable and manageable as the cold?

In one mission in Afghanistan the US dropped 19 bombs and fired two Hellfire missiles, 205 rockets and 500 rounds of cannon shot. Number of Taliban fighters killed? One.

"Where were the rights for these children who have been violated?" asks an Afghan MP. "Did they have rights or not? Did they have rights to live as part of the world community?"

If the public had access to these reports, says Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, they would see the gulf between what is said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes.

The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100 billion a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all.

The war in Afghanistan is lost and Afghans are coming to terms with the return of their former Taliban rulers, and might even welcome some stability and order after 10 years of Nato-induced chaos.

The Afghan army is stoned on patrol, gutless in combat, and according to a secret US-Nato report, killing in increasing numbers American and coalition soldiers who are training them.

Most sickening of all are politicians who sit in office chairs and start wars and wave flags as young men and women go off to kill and die and be psychologically and emotionally damaged for life.

It is not a "culture of abuse" that makes US soldiers commit atrocities in Afghanistan, but sending them to fight an unjustified war that has slaughtered tens of thousands.

Obama gloats over the "success" of unaccountable drone operations that wantonly kill many innocent people through either sloppiness or ignorance.

According to Christopher Hitchens, 'religion poisons everything', and is the reason for the barbarisms of today's Afghanistan, which is why the West has a moral duty to intervene.

The linchpin of the NATO 'exit strategy' is an Afghan army with massive desertion rates, heavy drug use, illiteracy, corruption, an unwillingness to fight, and an inability to act independently of the US military.

Exhausted by war and the resultant suicide terrorism within its borders, Pakistan is in a terrible mess, says Tariq Ali, worse than at any time in its recent history.