The myth of training Afghanistan's army

As Australia announces its withdrawal from the Afghan quagmire, it’s worth another look at the myth of our so-called training mission there.

Supposedly we are training an Afghan army so that the country will be able to “stand on its own feet” in some happy and democratic future when our ten or fifteen or twenty-five year run of doing God’s work there comes to an end.

It is ISAF, NATO and the Pentagon that have arbitrarily decided that 350,000 men under arms is the sufficient number to ensure a secure and “independent” Afghanistan, a number higher by several orders of magnitude than at any time in the country’s history.

The estimated cost of maintaining that army ranges from four to six billion dollars per year.  This in a country with gross government revenues in the range of one billion dollars.

Do the math.  

What is the nature of the “independence” that a foreign trained, foreign equipped, and foreign funded army is to preserve in Afghanistan?

I believe the technical term would be "imaginary".