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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

A Hellfire missile apparently costs $150K [0].

Given that it's apparently OK to launch one of these at a single suspected enemy informant, couldn't we have saved a lot of time, money and lives by just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

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The money for a missile could be given to the population, but then it would not go to the missile’s manufacturer. But the whole point of the war is to give money to arms makers. They are the only ones who benefit from the war and who lobby for it.

Infrastructure and industry were the solution to Afghanistan. A tribe which owns a large share in the local mining operation is a tribe which does its best to keep the peace.

The US could have built a lot of roads and propped up a lot of barely profitable enterprises with the money spent on all those military operations.

No. The purpose of the war is to fund defense contractors and create jobs back at home. Giving the money directly to afganis would not do that.

>just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like?

Lol we also did that.

No, most of the foreing aid got stolen by the corrupt Afghan government. see https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/taliban-take-kabul-via-path-... . They didn't even pay their servicemen, that's the reason for the quick surrender. Interesting why very few in the US are asking how they could spend more than a trillion of the taxpayers money without any oversight.

Well the strategy was technically always to bribe the warlords, bribing random citizens is ineffective.

But I'm confused why you think we disagree.

So like 30-50k per person for the total cost of the war. Or 1.6k-3k per year. I guess that's doable but it's probably not a lot of money. Plus the power structures still want to take advantage of any situation, it's not like 3k is going to pacify a warlord in the country.

So nope let's go with teh hellfire.

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