Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State the U.S. Specifically, she said "we cannot permit northern Mali to become a safe haven." The next day, January 24, Clinton introduced John Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as hearings were held on his nomination to succeed her. She called him "the right choice to carry forward the Obama Administration's foreign policy", and called out his testimony before the same committee in 1971 in opposition to the Vietnam War as "speaking hard truths about a war that had gone badly off track." At both public appearances, as well as at the second inauguration of Barack Obama, Clinton wore
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State broke down, despite efforts of the State Department to revive it, and Clinton and the U.S. ended up supporting the winner of the 2009 Honduran general election, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, with Clinton characterizing the elections as "free and fair" and Lobo as holding a strong commitment to democracy and the rule of constitutional law. Clinton co-chaired the high-level U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, D.C. on July 27–28, 2009 and led the Strategic Track for the United States. In August 2009, Clinton embarked on her longest trip yet, to a number of stops in Africa. On August 10, 2009,