Conducting foreign policy is not the same as practicing medicine. But it would have been good if President Obama had adopted the principle of the Hippocratic oath that requires physicians to “abstain from doing harm.”
Even when the president has sought commendable goals, he has often couched them in rhetoric about joining him on the “right side” of history. This only invited powerful competitors to lock in strategic gains, while leaving erstwhile friends and allies to go it alone.
