Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States' initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.

I'm the first girl from Afghanistan to lead a series in the United States.

The United States appears to be a debtor nation in perpetuity.

Vietnam and the United States have a very broad relationship that governs not just economic issues but the whole range of issues and obviously we will continue to make our views known with respect to some of the concerns, particularly as the relationship continues to be strengthened over the course of the next year.

If the United States is treating Afghanistan as a sovereign country it has to prove it.

The historical problem of the United States is to admit that it is a multiracial and multi-ethnic nation.