Clinton Knocks Obama’s ‘Don’t Do Stupid Stuff’ Foreign Policy Approach

Hillary Clinton CGI America, an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, Denver, Colorado - 24 Jun 2014 (Rex Features via AP Images)
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Hillary Clinton criticized President Obama’s foreign policy approach, asserting that he should have taken action in Syria.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” she said in an interview with The Atlantic published on Sunday.

Clinton criticized Obama for being too cautious when it comes to intervening abroad.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg asked Clinton about the Obama administration’s foreign affairs motto, “Don’t do stupid shit.”

“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Clinton responded.

She acknowledged that Obama was “trying to communicate to the American people that he’s not going to do something crazy.” But she added that this wasn’t the best approach.

Read the full Atlantic piece here.

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