I guess Black Americans would be worth 30 points
I learned of this astounding bit of xenophobia via Foreign Dispatches
Something that seems to be a part of many conversations, but rarely explicitly so, is the question: How many Americans should die in order to achieve the fill in the blank goal? A parallel is the question: What is the value of an American life as compared to the value of a non-American life [P6: emphasis added]
…There's also the issue of how exactly to put values on the different factors. For me, to paraphrase the commercial, to save my kids, priceless. For others, who knows? Perhaps some Nobel-winning economist or philosopher may have already written extensively on this and come up with some very well-thought out values. Absent that, and SOLELY for the sake of discussion, let's use the following values (which may change upon further reflection):
US citizen: 50 points
US military: 47.5 points
Citizen of a 'Friend of the US' country (England, Spain, Israel, for example): 25 points
Citizen of a 'Not acting like a friend, yet not totally hostile' country : (Germany and France, for example, and for the time being): 20 points
Citizen of a country that we just don't have a lot of experience with: 8 points
US Human shields: 5 points
Non US citizen human shield: 0 points (sorry, I just don't care)
Innocent (non-arms bearing) citizen of a hostile country: 4 points
Those wishing for the US to 'get its butt kicked' (Tom Robbins, Chrissie Hynde): 1/2 point each
