Ex-soldier Joe Glenton says, while war is a toxic institution, for some of those who conduct it, particularly privileged young princes it can appear to be a latter-day boy's own adventure.

"This arrogant and insensitive attitude to killing Afghans, whoever they are, is hardly likely to win hearts and minds - a supposed aim of the war."

Karzai and Obama are working on an agreement legalizing permanent military bases in Afghanistan: but as long as we have foreign military bases in our country, we have no independence.

Soldiers are being sent to kill and be killed in Afghanistan as "human shields" for politicians who would rather the killing and dying continue than have to admit the war is lost.

In 2012, the British army killed a number of children and injured more in a war which is lost and serves no other purpose than to protect the reputations of those waging it.

As Britain alongside the US and Nato plans new interventions in Syria and Iran, the only "success" coming out of the failure of the war in Afghanistan would seem to be yet more war.

Arguably the greatest collection of military power in history has been ground down by ordinary people with no planes, no armour, no drones and no illusions about why Afghanistan was invaded.

The children of north-west Pakistan are not like our children, they have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears, they belong to the non-human world.

With their failure to anticipate that western armies cannot remain popular for long when they invade Muslim countries, Bush and Blair are guilty of as great a folly as they were in Iraq.

Three Afghan children aged 12, 10 and 8, who were killed in a US airstrike as they were gathering fuel, were legitimate targets with "potential hostile intent".

The last time the US had 10,000 "trainers" and "advisors" in a war zone was 1962 and the country was Vietnam: before long those advisors became 500,000 US troops fighting a war.

This will be the last Christmas for some British soldiers and the blood of those killed will be on the hands of David Cameron and the government waging a war they know to be futile and lost.

"It is not worth wasting one more life in Afghanistan. The only rational policy now is to leave quickly. This is the only cause for which further lives should be risked."

She was proud to be a soldier, but did Corporal Channing Day expect when she joined the British army that she would be sent to fight in illegal or unjustified wars of occupation?

If the killings continue at the present rate, another 100 British soldiers and untold Afghans will die in this pointless operation before final withdrawal planned for 2014.

We must cut through the noise and expose those who try to use Malala's suffering to rehabilitate a murderous occupation and a cruel and illegal drone war.