Donations for Niger food crisis increase in the past week

Now that the story is finally starting to make headlines, efforts to help the starving nation have been coming in, according to the UN. Currently about a quarter of the population of Niger is starving and recent estimates are saying that relief for the entire 3.5 million people could take up to 2 months to fully mobilize.

Besides Niger, much of the region has suffered from drought and research is suggesting that crop failures due to drought will also have a strong impact on Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Mali. It seems that all too often rich countries wait until well after the fact to take action which too often means too many lives are lost, not to mention the cost of taking action then becomes considerably higher.

With US troops operating across this region of Africa as part of the war on terror, could someone in the Pentagon not have seen the benefits in taking early action? Like I said before, I also wonder where the "culture of life" is with the US administration who overlooked this looming problem.