HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Obama’s plan to stop ISIS panned by both sides of aisle. Hillary’s first to plunge in the knife:

“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” said Clinton, who served as Obama’s first secretary of state.

She made the comment to The Atlantic in response to a question about one of the administration’s blunt mantras to observe caution – an approach critics say has led to disengagement as events exploded in the Middle East.

Clinton, in a new interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the magazine, blasted the administration’s failure to arm Syrian rebels in the early phase of their uprising against President Bashar al Assad – a policy she tried to change.

“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,” Clinton said.

Her strategy appears to be to run against Obama the way Obama ran against Bush. Maybe a bit awkward that she was in charge of his foreign policy for most of the time.