How, as a privileged US citizen, can I approach world events and suffering as a global citizen?

As humans we are inherently biased. Our experiences influence our interpretation of events and phenomena. My experience as a white male from the US in a safe environment and stable background limits my perception of the complexities of the world. The narrative of the world I have been taught and experienced is vastly different from the realities of people in all other parts of the globe. Not only must I admit to being ill-informed, inexperienced, and harmfully biased and ignorant but worse than that is the fact that as a US citizen I am a part of the exploitation of millions of people across the globe. Therefore ‘privileged’ is a flawed term when discussing the advantage of being as fortunate as me or anyone like me. More than a privilege it should be considered an obligation to anyone this lucky who wishes to be a global citizen to detach themselves from bias and nationalism in order to judge those suffering around the world with empathy, and take full responsibility for their role in other’s suffering.
If we judge those in more difficult situations on our own moral scale we could never be empathetic. For example, on 9/11 nearly 3,000 American citizens lost their lives. In the ensuing wars approximately 210,000 innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan were killed as a direct result of combat. However far more people died due to a flawed healthcare system and malnutrition than were killed, bringing the death tally much higher. In the pursuit of destroying those responsible for 9/11, we have directly or indirectly killed more than ten times the number of american service members and innocent civilians lost that day. While no life is worth more than another, whether you believe these deaths were necessary and the ends justify the means, it is still important to be empathetic when examining these so called ‘terrorists’ we hunt. Compare roughly 3,000 lost Americans and the profound effect it had on our nationalism, to the over 200,000 innocents killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. That’s 200,000 people who were loved and lost often because of us. The result of this violence and loss of civilian life is hate for the invaders, meaning new enemies, and rampant PTSD, a disorder most associate with the empathy they feel for US troops. PTSD is a result of trauma, and it changes one’s brain chemistry, making them more prone to crippling anxiety and fear that elicits a unique reaction in every person but commonly leads to violent episodes. 3,000 lost Americans led to an enormous boost in our nationalism and pro-war mentality. For this reason I find it much less difficult to imagine why kids armed with AK-47s are willing to fight the most advanced military in the world and even blow themselves up. This same disorder has affected entire communities across Iraq and Afghanistan and will no doubt persist in other middle eastern countries like Syria, suffering in part from a power vacuum the US military helped create. Therefore it is the responsibility of global citizens to disassociate themselves from their nationalistic views and carefully examine the circumstances that influence each individual and community’s perception of reality, and their impact on said reality.

http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/reintegration/overview-mental-health-effects.asp
http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians
http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/afghanistan-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-mental-health-care-genocide-violence
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/