The economic cost in lives for Afghanistan is either incredibly high, or incredibly low, depending on how you look at it. Afghanistan is ridiculously poor. We s

The economic cost in lives for Afghanistan is either incredibly high, or incredibly low, depending on how you look at it. Afghanistan is ridiculously poor. We spent $3 trillion dollars, invading a country that has a GDP of $2 billion. Life is cheap in such countries, both economically and figuratively. Pre war Afghanistan had a pre-war per capita GDP of $112 or about $10,000 lifetime earnings per person. At 250,000 Afghan lives lost this is about $2.5 billion in lost productive effort by a mixture of insurgents and civilians who are hard to separate out. Post war Afghanistan has a Per Capita GDP of $600. Economically speaking Afghanistan is about 5 times better off. Whether that means they are actually better off is a matter of opinion. Is that worth the lives of a quarter million of your citizens? Is it better to be an independent but poor country? Or to be a country dependent on aid from a richer nation that invaded you?