If you were a VC or investor in the company, it should give you confidence that someone is around that can give the CEO advice on managing geo-political minefields. The last thing you want is the overseas political issues that Microsoft and Google have had to deal with.
Given how well she did giving advice about previous overseas political issues, I'd wager you'd want her as far away from your CEO as it was possible to get without sending him to the moon.
Here we are getting a little out of my element, but... How well do we know that she gave bad advice, versus him not listening? I do know that her speciality was Russia, not the Middle East, but after all that time in DC I am pretty sure she's learned a lot. Sometimes you learn from political failures, just like entrepreneurial ones.
