Over the summer, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy briefly created a stir in Washington. According to Clinton, "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
The phrase "Don't do stupid stuff" was used by Obama as a critique of the Bush administration's reckless war in Iraq. Obama was elected president in part for his campaign promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since then, however, a series of civil wars and related atrocities have broken out in countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq and Ukraine. The Obama administration's failure to effectively deal with such crises has been interpreted as signaling the weakness and retreat of the United States.