When you have a destabilized country, it becomes a breeding ground for terrorist and other unsavory organizations. The cycle as some would have it:
"Why should we send aide to other countries when we have people starving in our own country. We should take care of our own people first."
But very few people starve to death in our country (although some may die from temperature extremes, which is totally unnecessary but part of the same attitude "why should we pass out freebies to lazy drug addicts when I work hard for my money" etc.). Also, our cost of living is much higher, it costs more to keep someone alive here than it does in Africa. So we take care of folks here, we neglect stabilization tactics there (which is admittedly hard, considering how corrupt and morally bankrupt their governments are, and how backwards and uneducated they keep much of the populace of these countries).
The countries destabilize, at which point military intervention or presence is required. And that is frighteningly expensive to maintain. Not to mention, now we both still have people starving AND we have a terrorist threat to our country AND we have expensive troops stationed overseas in a dangerous area.
Obviously, this isn't working.
Just sending aide also doesn't work. For one, half the time it probably doesn't get where it needs to go. For that matter, I'm not even sure we have that kind of right. It's not exactly as if we're the most stable country right now, we're so divided. If we can't find unity between our disparate selves, how are we to provide an example to the rest of the world?
Everyone is going to have to put their feelings aside, their beliefs on hold, and sit down and look at what the numbers have to say, the real numbers, not the numbers that justify whatever we want them to. We have to decide what is best for the country, not what is best for ourselves. And we have to stop assuming that those two things are the same.