Richard Holbrooke

I didn't post anything yesterday about the death of Richard Holbrooke, mostly because the Egypt Wikileaks and my Winter issue kept me busy enough. So I'm literally a day late and probably a dollar short as well. I'll keep it brief since most of it's already been said.

His major involvement in our region has been as the Obama Administration's AfPak envoy, on the civilian side. So much of the appreciation (and video of a Holbrooke speech) posted by Foreign Policy may be a bit out of theater for my readers. Abu Muqawama's brief post is more to our point, perhaps.

You may well have heard, as has been widely reported, that his last words to his doctors before going into surgery were reportedly "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan." I think that's a fitting epitaph for a veteran diplomat, so I'll give him the last word.