(and your, as in americans)

>NGO's? common fronts for espionage, CIA etc...
>USAID? dont know anything about them,

its how the u.s government delivers humanitarian aid to countries
they might hire ngo's to do the work
but the contractual agreement is typically between the US govt and the national govt
so your main beef is with USAID.

>i dont think anything we did in the first gulf war was in
>anyway to "help" anyone but ourselves

i dont necessarily see self-interest as being a bad thing - actually i'd say majority of human interaction is self-interest
(including humanitarian work - which i've had the 'pleasure' of being involved in for over 5 years)

anyway...
what i'm reading is
some form of intervention - that is not based on self-interest
or intervention only when a country requests it
(by this do you mean the national government of the country? in the case of syria this would mean assad
or how would you legitimize who calls for help?)

>Sudan, Nigeria, West African Region I'd say are the glaring
>things we seem to not really be so focused on(for obvious
>reasons)

i dont know about sudan at the moment, but id say in south sudan....
yes the u.s is engaged