Regarding Civilization or savagery, which is this: Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Iraqi children:
If it's a metaphor, it can only be because there's no sacrifice at all, the death of non-citizens don't factor into the cost-benefit analysis.
This is absolutely false.
It's also really an unfair question because you don't get to see the result of your policy before enacting it.
Moreover, those deaths probably never happened, at least not in those numbers, and they were used as an argument for war:
https://psmag.com/news/the-iraq-sanctions-myth-56433
Like the supposed 1 million deaths from the Second Iraq War, those numbers are based on surveys which are highly flawed.
Further, the poor perception of the Second Iraq War supported the lack of action in Syria under the Obama administration. Nobody knows how many lives could've saved (and how many sacrificed) if there had been an early intervention in Syria.