The U.S. took military action on behalf of Muslims six times in the past 30 years—in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and participated (if only from behind) in the military operation that removed Muamar Qaddafi from power when he seemed poised to destroy the city of Benghazi. So call it seven. Say what you will about the wisdom of the Iraq invasion (or the other interventions), there is no doubt that they were undertaken with the goal of freeing people from a dictator, not imposing one. As for treasure, no one will ever know the true cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq operations and the massive rebuilding efforts—schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, banks, and courts—initiated after active hostilities had ended, but estimates put it at $1.1 trillion for Iraq and $2.3 trillion for Afghanistan. Those who make facile comparisons between our wars and the Russian invasion might want to reflect that no Ukrainians are mobbing the Russian embassy in hopes of visas and no Ukrainians are hanging onto Russian jets. You don’t have to agree that the Iraq war was good policy or the long occupation of Afghanistan a wise use of resources to concede that we tried awfully hard to help both countries.

As for the different treatment of Ukrainian versus Mideast refugees, let’s remember that Europe accepted more than one million refugees from Syria and the U.S. accepted several thousand, despite non-trivial fears that ISIS and Al-Qaeda elements might be among those asking for asylum. Arguably, the strain those immigrants placed on European societies—because they did include some terrorists—led directly to the rise of far-right parties. And while we’re thinking of Syria, let’s not forget that Russia also intervened in the conflict—on the side of Bashar al-Asad, helping to reduce Aleppo and other cities to rubble and further immiserating that nation.

“Whose Lives Really Matter?” asks Salon. Well, African lives do. That’s why the United States launched PEPFAR under George W. Bush’s presidency, the largest commitment by any nation to fight a disease in history.