Potential 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remarks during a speech at Georgetown University on Wednesday are causing controversy.

In what she dubbed a display of "smart power," Clinton said that the American government should "empathise" with its enemies.

The former Secretary of State described "smart power" as "using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security, leaving no one on the sidelines, showing respect, even for one's enemies, trying to understand and insofar as psychologically possible, empathise with their perspective and point of view, helping to define the problems, determine the solutions", the Washington Times reports.

According to Merriam-Webster, empathy is "the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions," or "the ability to share someone else's feelings."

Fox News host and former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North called Clinton's appeal "irrational."

"I can't think of a presidential candidate who would have said those kinds of things," he admitted.

One of the world's threats is the Islamic State, which grew in power after the US withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011. US troops had occupied the country since 2003, two years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lt. Col. North compared Clinton's statements to empathising with Japan after the Pearl Harbour attacks.

"Think about December 7, 1941 and then FDR going to the Congress of the United States the next day saying, 'We need to have more empathy for Japan,'" he said.

"If you're going to run for president of the United States, you cannot talk that way about the people who intend to kill us. Who are dying to kill us. ...This is capitulation."

Six weeks ago, Clinton backpedalled on her assertion that corporations and businesses don't create jobs.

"Don't let anybody tell you that, you know, it's corporations and businesses that create jobs," she said at a campaign rally for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on October 24.

Three days later, she clarified her statement.

"I short-handed this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I've been saying for a couple decades," Clinton said at another campaign rally, this time for New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.

"Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out, not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas."