I am an emigrant to the United States. I had to flee the place I'm from for political reasons (the place was unsafe for me and my family). But yet still I want the people of that place to do well... for two reasons I guess: 1) I just simply want everyone on this earth to do well, no matter what country they're citizens to and 2) because the people I left behind, a lot of them were family, friends. I knew them well, I still keep in touch with them. They're still among my closest friends. I want them to live the remainder of their lives peacefully, happily, prosperously.

I know that you've got a somewhat similar background story as me... you/your family left Bangladesh for a better life. You were lucky in that you were privileged enough to have the means to get out of that place -- you know that a good half of the country did not. So, what about the people still there... surely you care a non-zero amount for their welfare. Right? We live in an interconnected world. Our actions, business decisions, political decisions have an effect on the entire world -- sometimes it's good, sometimes it isn't. An argument could be made that there are people out there in the world who are not doing well because of something that our country did. Right now you have Obama on a tour trying to drum up support for a war. His main reasoning is that America is the police of the world... 400 children were supposedly gassed, and so we have to step in to stop this injustice. There are injustices of different kinds being perpetrated in other countries... what makes them so different from Syria, that they don't deserve our help?

I can understand prioritizing ... first comes the welfare of our own American citizens, and then the rest of the world... but completely ignoring the other world seems like a cruel and selfish thing to do. How is this not obvious?