Thoughts on suffering

I recently watched a few short videos on the terrible hunger and suffering currently going on in Ethiopia and the Sudan.  Heart wrenching, devastating suffering of children is completely unacceptable when something can be done about it.
I had a couple of thoughts on this.  First, my academic side.  The videos bothered me on two aspects.  The obvious, of course, is seen in the mere fact of children being born and living long enough to suffer and die by starvation.  The second, seemingly cold and distant, is that the videos were a bald attack of emotional manipulation.  Yes, absolutely, we should be greatly grieved by the suffering of children.  But the emotional manipulation that is used to make someone sad, I believe, is wrong.  We should be sad, not because the music and the camera angles move our emotions, but because these people, all of them made in the image of God, are suffering for no good reason.
As Christian's, we should be grieved and saddened by the mere facts of the situation, not by the emotional manipulation of the art.
My other thought is that this terrible situation can be undone and reversed by intervention.  It is great that so many people want to help by sending food and money.  But this is a very short term band aid. The problem is a combination of government corruption, military abuse and Islam.  The Islamic worldview is apathetic because it is nihilistic.  Human life doesn't matter because Allah is arbitrary.  He chooses some to paradise and others to damnation, merely based on his arbitrary will. The easy answer is that those who are born into poverty and suffering, obviously are going to feel Allah's wrath.  Therefore nothing needs to be or should be done about it.
The equally maddening thing is that the US could easily intervene and help all of these people by military power, but there is no economic reason for them to do so, so nothing is done.
As Christians, if we can help in some way, we should.  And no matter what. we should pray. And this is not a last resort, but a powerful act of faith.