Writing for The New York Times, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton railed against the “latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds” caused by President Donald Trump’s administration this week, after The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed he’d been added to a group Signal chat discussing plans to strike Yemen.
Clinton’s reaction is notable because, about a decade ago, some of the same Republicans now playing down the Signal scandal relentlessly accused her of mishandling classified information as secretary of state because she had used a private email server to send official messages.
Trump’s administration not only used a private app, Signal, to coordinate war plans — his national security adviser appears to have accidentally added a journalist to the group who then watched the planning take place.
“It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” Clinton wrote in an opinion piece published Friday titled, “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?”
“It’s just dumb,” she reiterated, adding later: “In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart.”
Among the “dumb” decisions Trump’s administration has made thus far: Firing the people who maintain the nuclear weapon stockpile, cutting international aid to prevent future pandemics, and dismissing seasoned generals.
The best approach to keeping America safe, Clinton wrote, is to combine “the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence.”
“None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless,” she said.
As Trump continues to call for cutting supposed “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal government, Clinton argued that putting money behind America’s soft power saves money in the long run when the alternative is military action.
“Preventing wars is cheaper than fighting them,” she said.
Clinton also painted an alarming picture of the stakes at hand.
“Propagandists in Beijing and Moscow know we are in a global debate about competing systems of governance. People and leaders around the world are watching to see if democracy can still deliver peace and prosperity or even function,” she wrote. “If America is ruled like a banana republic, with flagrant corruption and a leader who puts himself above the law, we lose that argument.”
Read the whole piece at The New York Times.