Saving Lives

This is my latest at the Partial Observer. Excerpt:

Let's say a dictator is threatening an ethnic minority group in his country. The international community fears a coming genocide, with up to 500,000 lives lost. The U.S. "comes to the rescue," overthrows the dictator, and "saves" this group. If this mission costs $50 billion, that means it costs $1 million to save each potential genocide victim. . . . World Vision believes that spending as little as a dollar a day per child will greatly improve their health, nutrition, and education. So, if 500,000 of these children were sponsored for a dollar a day, the cost for a whole year would be about $183 million. A dollar-a-day support for 100 million of these children would cost $36.5 billion, less than what our hypothetical "humanitarian war" would cost to save 500,000 lives.