This is the way the capitalist ruling classes look at the war in Afghanistan and thus shape news coverage in positive ways to keep you on board the war effort:
In the world of such cold and inhuman accounting, the price tag on over 1,500 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan (or who died of their wounds in military hospitals such as Landstuhl in Germany, and other emergency care centers outside of the region) might seem acceptable. Assuming that on average a soldier posted in Afghanistan was deployed there for 2 years at a cost of $1 million dollars a year, the 1,500 lost lives purely and coldly seen from an economic vantage point have cost the US Government approximately $2 billion. Roughly calculated that amounts to less than one percent of the mineral treasures assumed to be buried in Afghanistan, once extracted.(14) Those who stand to gain from any mineral bonanza in Afghanistan are most likely not those who have paid the immeasurable personal and emotional toll of losing loved ones in the Afghan conflict.