one assumes it will get cheaper as time passes. The first CD cost about nine billion dollars to produce. Each one after that cost about nine cents, so the average cost goes down over time.
Also, as has been pointed out, it's kinda misleading to count costs this way. The HeNe laser, for example, was developed for purposes other than putting a dance tune in your head.
As for afghanistan, we yankees don't like to learn vicariously, do we? If we did, then we'd rely on the fact that the Soviet Union went broke fighting the Taliban for a decade, and we would not need to perform this experiment to learn first-hand that the Taliban can't be easily dissuaded by bullets.
The Taliban didn't exist until 1994, five years after the Soviets withdrew.
