Um--can't we just pay you to not bomb us?

In a post from Yglesias, a pretty striking statistic: the US is slated to spend $65 billion this year in the war with Afghanistan, while meanwhile the total GDP of Afghanistan is only $12.5 billion:

If Afghanistan’s total output is only worth $12.5 billion, then think about how much you might be able to accomplish with $6.5 billion a year in bribes rather than ten times that amount in defense expenditures.

Incidentally, from my experience of playing real-time strategy games, if you're fighting a much more powerful enemy, having them outspend you by several orders of magnitude in a battle of attrition is a really, really good position to be in.

Doesn't bode well.