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You may have seen reports that Hillary recently said:"Not doing stupid shit does not make a foreign policy", or words to that effect. I also saw a claim that Obama was considerably annoyed at this. My fear is that when she proposed hawkish moves that Obama's response was "We don't do stupid shit" and that she chafed under that injunction. The easiest way for her to blight her administration would be to pull another stupid intervention, comparable in some way to Iraq.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Jun 10th, 2016 at 09:34:48 PM EST
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Her exact words, in reference to arming Syrian rebels earlier and at greater scale than we did, were: "'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."

Obama, who tends to be pretty levelheaded and tends to roll his eyes at obvious politicking like this, was reportedly livid.  He didn't respond in public but did apparently give her a piece of his mind in private.  Axelrod, on the other hand, had no qualms about responding on Twitter.

I'm sure there were situations like that, where she'd advocate a larger response and he'd veto it under the "Don't Do Stupid Shit" doctrine.  And I'm sure it did chafe her.  Clinton tends to favor sweeping ideological positions in the foreign policy realm that suppose our military and intelligence folks are capable of a lot of social engineering.  Obama tends to be skeptical of sweeping ideological positions on anything (he's a liberal, obviously, but doesn't tend to be wedded to methodology), doesn't think large-scale military interventions like Iraq are either necessary or desirable, and prefers calculated risks on an ad hoc basis that leave us with an ability to wind down or ramp up as results dictate.

(His interview with Jeffrey Goldberg was pretty informative on that.)

If she's smart, she'll see that it served him pretty well.  It's how he beat her eight years ago, after all.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Sat Jun 11th, 2016 at 09:07:08 AM EST
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For public purposes 'stuff' is more presidential. And I fear her tendencies, by now, are pretty much hard wired and that she will try to open every can of worms and then live in the midst of them. I certainly hope not.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Jun 11th, 2016 at 09:46:53 AM EST
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