Tweet
Islamabad -- Mourners often talk about people who were "larger than life," but in the case of American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, that shopworn phrase really did apply. He was too big, too brilliant, too ambitious and, at times, too self-absorbed, to fit neatly into the holes and pegs that are assigned for rising government officials.
Holbrooke, who passed away late Monday night, was someone identified by his colleagues as a likely future secretary of state as early as his first, flamboyant tour of duty in Vietnam. He never achieved that dream, and it's fair to say that his final job, as President Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was among the most difficult and frustrating assignments of his long career.
Holbrooke hoped he could crack the problem by the sheer force of his intellect and big-man charisma. I remember traveling with him on his first major swing through Afghanistan and Pakistan, in April 2009. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a man Joe Klein of Time once likened to a genial "country doctor," tried to smooth over every bump on the trip. But Holbrooke didn't want smoothing. He insisted on meeting fierce Pashtun tribesmen for roundtable discussions, as if we could resolve everything right then and there with enough talk. In Islamabad, he met with a group of young intellectuals from Pakistan's tribal areas -- and Pakistani intelligence officials were so anxious about what he might be up to that they were said to have stopped and interrogated these brave men and women on their way back home. The Islamabad meeting, though, was as creative and useful an encounter as I've seen anyone organize as part of Af-Pak diplomacy. It was vintage Holbrooke.
But he offended too many of the smaller and more particular people he needed to work with, in the Obama administration and abroad. He clashed famously with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who not entirely without reason thought that Holbrooke wanted him out, as well as with various other personalities in Afghanistan. Pretty soon, it became difficult for the Af-Pak negotiator to spend much productive time in Af-Pak, which wasn't good. He made an effort to throttle back that magnificent personality -- trying not to give too many interviews, trying not to be a dominating presence. It was a hopeless task, like trying to bottle lightning. If he saw something that offended or appealed to him, Holbrooke could not keep his mouth shut.
The saddest clashes to watch were between Holbrooke and National Security Adviser Jim Jones, another big man. They (and even more, their staffs) traded unkind words in one of those Washington feuds that is talked about constantly but written about too little. The tension grew so large that by early this year, Obama reportedly told his subordinates in the White House that he planned to remove Holbrooke. But the veteran negotiator appealed to his boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who knew his value, and he was given a reprieve.
But that was a political reprieve only. Holbrooke continued to drive himself to make work a policy that, it must be said, had even more loose ends and contradictions than did the Af-Pak coordinator himself. And in the end, the job proved too much.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/pos...reciation.html
Holbrooke, who passed away late Monday night, was someone identified by his colleagues as a likely future secretary of state as early as his first, flamboyant tour of duty in Vietnam. He never achieved that dream, and it's fair to say that his final job, as President Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was among the most difficult and frustrating assignments of his long career.
Holbrooke hoped he could crack the problem by the sheer force of his intellect and big-man charisma. I remember traveling with him on his first major swing through Afghanistan and Pakistan, in April 2009. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a man Joe Klein of Time once likened to a genial "country doctor," tried to smooth over every bump on the trip. But Holbrooke didn't want smoothing. He insisted on meeting fierce Pashtun tribesmen for roundtable discussions, as if we could resolve everything right then and there with enough talk. In Islamabad, he met with a group of young intellectuals from Pakistan's tribal areas -- and Pakistani intelligence officials were so anxious about what he might be up to that they were said to have stopped and interrogated these brave men and women on their way back home. The Islamabad meeting, though, was as creative and useful an encounter as I've seen anyone organize as part of Af-Pak diplomacy. It was vintage Holbrooke.
But he offended too many of the smaller and more particular people he needed to work with, in the Obama administration and abroad. He clashed famously with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who not entirely without reason thought that Holbrooke wanted him out, as well as with various other personalities in Afghanistan. Pretty soon, it became difficult for the Af-Pak negotiator to spend much productive time in Af-Pak, which wasn't good. He made an effort to throttle back that magnificent personality -- trying not to give too many interviews, trying not to be a dominating presence. It was a hopeless task, like trying to bottle lightning. If he saw something that offended or appealed to him, Holbrooke could not keep his mouth shut.
The saddest clashes to watch were between Holbrooke and National Security Adviser Jim Jones, another big man. They (and even more, their staffs) traded unkind words in one of those Washington feuds that is talked about constantly but written about too little. The tension grew so large that by early this year, Obama reportedly told his subordinates in the White House that he planned to remove Holbrooke. But the veteran negotiator appealed to his boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who knew his value, and he was given a reprieve.
But that was a political reprieve only. Holbrooke continued to drive himself to make work a policy that, it must be said, had even more loose ends and contradictions than did the Af-Pak coordinator himself. And in the end, the job proved too much.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/pos...reciation.html
Comment