Washington Post : As Richard Holbrooke was sedated for surgery, family members said, his final words were to his Pakistani surgeon: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan."

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The Death of a Great Diplomat and Statesman

The Washington Post
Richard Holbrooke dies: Veteran U.S. diplomat brokered Dayton peace accords
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Richard Holbrooke dies: Veteran U.S. diplomat brokered Dayton peace accords



Some excerpts :

"He's the most egotistical bastard I've ever met," Vice President-elect Biden told President-elect Obama as Clinton made her choice known, according to an account by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. "But maybe he's the right guy for the job."

His long diplomatic career positioned him perhaps better than anyone else in the Obama administration to navigate the often-messy intersection of diplomacy, counterinsurgency and politics.

Mr. Holbrooke felt a strong responsibility, as the only person in the administration who had lived and worked through Vietnam, to bring up his perspectives of that conflict during the three-month White House policy review last year that led to the current strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Mr. Holbrooke's office on the State Department's ground floor was filled with a diverse mix of policy experts and academics, some of whom were hired precisely because they disagreed with the George W. Bush administration's Iraq war strategy and had little better to say about Obama's efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He was a strong advocate of major increases in development and governance aid. Under his direction, the number of U.S. civilian officials in Afghanistan has more than tripled, to exceed 1,000.

One of his first initiatives was to end the U.S. focus on poppy eradication in Afghanistan, on the grounds that removing the livelihood from opium production that sustained many Afghan farmers was counterproductive.

Mr. Holbrooke crossed swords with another part of the administration in Pakistan, where he ordered an end to the automatic renewal of aid contracts with U.S. and other foreign nongovernmental organizations with long histories there.

Mr. Holbrooke experienced health problems in August, when he underwent treatment for heart problems and canceled one of his frequent trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Friday morning, he was taken to George Washington University Hospital after he became flushed and suffered chest pains during a meeting with Clinton.

He underwent a 21-hour operation that ended on Saturday to repair his aorta.

As Mr. Holbrooke was sedated for surgery, family members said, his final words were to his Pakistani surgeon: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan."

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