Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female

All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night.

Let me be clear: I'm a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service - and that's preposterous.

The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.

I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there.

Our national leaders tend to try to protect the national interest as they see it. They may screw up in that, but they at least see that as their role. In contrast, where issues of our national values are involved, which covers pretty much any humanitarian issue, they pretty much drop the ball.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding