Regarding the leaked State Department memo about bringing foreign Ebola patients to the U.S.: The memo’s assertion that “we have an obligation to assist non-citizen employees” of “U.S. agencies and programs” is perfectly defensible. I’m not sure “obligation” is the word I’d use, given its moral freight, but you could certainly argue that it might be in our interest to provide care for, say, local employees of the U.S. consulate in Monrovia, if any were to contract Ebola.

But the memo draws the circle of foreigners for whom we have an “obligation” far more broadly than that, including “contractors” of U.S. agencies and programs as well as employees and contractors of “NGOs and private firms based in the United States.” What possible obligation do U.S. citizens and taxpayers have for the medical care of Liberian employees of Firestone or of local employees of, to pick a charity at random, California-based Shine On Sierra Leone?

The issue is not just the risk posed to Americans by bringing Ebola patients to the U.S. Even if the CDC et al. become magically competent and there are no follow-on infections from people brought here, the State Department memo itself calculates the cost at “about $200,000 for each medevac and $300,000 for treatment per case.” Firestone Liberia has more than 6,500 employees — if only 100 of them get Ebola and are brought to the U.S. because of some phony “obligation” that exists only in the minds of globalist Obama administration functionaries, that’s $50 million that we’re on the hook for.

None of this is going to happen, now that the memo has been made public. But it provides an important insight to the thinking of the people running our foreign (and domestic) policies, who deny the American government’s exclusive responsibility to promote the interests of the American people, and at the same time cast the net of those for whom we do have a responsibility ever-more broadly.