Is Hillary Clinton Right to Criticize Obama's Foreign Policy?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took President Barack Obama to task for his strategy in the Middle East, saying the president’s “failure” to support Syrian rebels has led to the rise of the Islamic State, the militant Islamist group, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL, that is terrorizing Christian, Kurdish and Yazidi minorities in Iraq. “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against [Syrian President Bashar] 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,” said Clinton.
Clinton tempered her criticism, calling Obama “incredibly intelligent,” but spoke out against the president’s unofficial foreign policy motto “Don’t do stupid sh**.” Speaking with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Clinton said, “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”
[GALLERY: Political Cartoons on Hillary Clinton]
Clinton echoed the Obama administration’s support for Israeli military actions in the Gaza strip, but appeared more sympathetic than the president, who recently told the New York Times, “I don’t worry about Israel’s survival.” When asked if Israel’s response to rocket fire from Hamas was disproportionate — nearly 2,000 Palestinians, including civilians, have been killed — Clinton said, “Israel has a right to defend itself.” But Clinton went even further in her support, saying that, as a U.S. official, paying attention to anything that threatens Israel directly is “a given.” She maintained that Israel “did what it had to do” to respond to rocket fire from Hamas in early July.
Clinton’s remarks come soon after the release of her memoir “Hard Choices” and in the midst of a media frenzy over if and when she will launch her presidential campaign. Clinton is likely attempting to distance herself from the president, whose foreign policy approval rating sits at 36 percent this month. “Clinton-watchers say it's a matter of time before she highlights her differences with Obama,” said Goldberg of Clinton. “I got the sense that this effort is well underway.”
[SEE: Political Cartoons on President Obama]
But Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post says Clinton remained largely silent as secretary of state on many of the policies she now dismisses. Clinton “did not have the nerve to resign” over the Obama administration’s non-action in Syria, says Rubin, and the former secretary of state “boasted” about pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011. “She is left repudiating a foreign policy in which she fully participated and did not seriously criticize publicly until beginning her presidential pre-campaign,” Rubin writes. “That bespeaks not only a lack of political courage and honesty but also deficient foreign policy vision and foresight.”
So what do you think? Is Hillary right to criticize Obama’s foreign policy? Vote and comment below.