Actuarially speaking, the 2,372 American deaths in Afghanistan at 7 million per individual roughly cost about $17 billion dollars. A drop in the bucket compared to $3 trillion dollars.
It's hard to see dollar figures and realize we are watching the productive lives of half a million people being spent so easily. Then again, we don't know the economic benefits we gained from the Afghanistan war so it's hard to balance the sheet.
Maybe it netted us some benefit with regards to world trade we aren't seeing? Or maybe it only hurt us in that regard and $3 trillion is just the beginning?
Then again this is just economics without considering the ethics of such "peacekeeping missions".
Let's put that number in context. USD 1.5T is 2/3 (or 3/4) of the total cost US spent on their forever war in Afghanistan.[0,1]
Clearly doable for a dedicated nation, given that US lost the war, lost the 20 years, and with their botched withdrawal handed the country back to the very same political power they wanted to drive out in the first place.
In comparison, spending less than the cost of a lost war and having a guaranteed result of being able to walk into an empty territory sounds like a bargain.
Calculating economic costs should be done with respect to each nation. I would estimate Afghanistan suffered about $2.5 billion in losses from deaths of civilians and insurgents. However their GDP increased by 5x covering those losses in a month or two. From an economic standpoint losing the war was the best thing to happen to Afghanistan. From the perspective of its citizens and culture though I think you would have to ask them.
This is true, but I think when the tabulations are all finished, we'll discover that the war in Afghanistan really cost something north of $100 trillion -- we just aren't including everything we should be including in the tabulation currently. In these types of situations, it is very easy to exclude things like personnel and research going on at home supporting the war effort. It's also been politically convenient to fudge Afghanistan spending numbers for 20 years up until a few months ago, so we have no reason to expect the reported numbers are the full story. I say this as an ex-DOD civilian.
With a quarter of a million dead[1], I'm not sure I can agree with "better" for the families of those impacted. On a "Dollars Per Amount of Joy Conferred" metric for success (which I like!), I think this one gets a pretty big negative score.
Given the current state of Afghanistan, the return on investment is definitely not worth it. Our grandchildren will be paying for this debt.
This is $2T that could have went towards this country’s dismal healthcare system, funding social security, public education, and miscellaneous social programs.
Instead it has went directly to the DoD companies and private military contracting companies. $2T was literally stolen from the American people. This doesn’t even include the costs to support the few Afghan immigrants that we were able to extract and the healthcare towards the veterans that gave their limbs and life to the service.
As an American, I feel sick just thinking about it.
If I remember correctly, US taxpayers (and implicitly everyone who uses USD even via reserve currency basket) paid 2.3 trillion dollars for the war in Afghanistan.
My point is that no amount of tax money would fix problem of irrational spending of it (if you measure rationally from whole humanity benefit vs few elites).
I was using the bombing of civilians as a illustrative example and dont know the true cost, as it would depend on how you choose to measure it.
For example, if you divided the appropriated 750 billion for the war in Afghanistan by the 40k civilians killed,you would get around 50 million per civilian. This neglects the time value of money, so in that respect, it would be an underestimate.
However, this is all besides the point I stated in my last post. It seems you have on opinion on the subject, and if you would like to discuss it, I suggest you state it plainly.
I have seen the cost per day of being in Afghanistan as $300 million, each day, for 20 years.
While that greatly increased stock price for defense contractors, there seems in retrospect to be little other value for that money.
More of that tax money should have been devoted to cybersecurity, stem education, and even physical infrastructure that would safeguard water and food supply.
I am not naïve, I understand that both political parties are controlled by corporate/Wall Street interests. Still, you would hope that our elected officials could perhaps accept fewer kickbacks and function more in the interests of the American tax payer and not serve those financial interests who pay to get them elected and control them.
Really a sad situation. President Eisenhower was a good guy, and he nailed it when he warned the American public about the military industrial complex.
going by that logic US should just have given Afghanistan and Iraq people those $2T+ the US spent on the wars there instead... Given 33M population of the each of the both countries, it would be just meager $30K/person (half a Hellfire)
You're off by at least an order of magnitude there. I see estimates from $6 trillion[1] to $8 trillion[2] for the cost of the war on terror. Taking the high estimate and the 2001 population of 285 million (i.e. ignoring population growth since 2001) gives $28k per person, or $1400 per year over 20 years. Accounting for population growth and taking the lower cost estimate decreases the amount further.
Federal doesn't matter, until it does. It's decisive, for example, for war and peace. Those tend to have rather large effects on people.
Even without considering the lives lost, both American and foreign: The Afghan & Irak war have cost $5 trillion over the years. That's $60,000 for every US family of four that could have been put to other uses if those wars had been limited to a fast and cheap campaign against the Taliban government.
According to CBO analysis the total cost of Afghan & Iraq wars is going to be something like $2.5 trillion for the US.
Imagine if this sum would have been used mostly nonviolently for bribing and buying influence in the region. Depending how the money is distributed, it would have been:
* $35k per each person in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you divide it into households maybe something like $100k - 150k per household.
* 2.5 million millionaires, or
* assuming you need to just bribe 20,000 most influential persons/families/groups in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan that would be something like $80 million each.
It's hard to see dollar figures and realize we are watching the productive lives of half a million people being spent so easily. Then again, we don't know the economic benefits we gained from the Afghanistan war so it's hard to balance the sheet.
Maybe it netted us some benefit with regards to world trade we aren't seeing? Or maybe it only hurt us in that regard and $3 trillion is just the beginning?
Then again this is just economics without considering the ethics of such "peacekeeping missions".
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