Political Quotes

“Madam President, it is with deep sadness that I speak in memory of a dear friend, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who died Monday at the far-too-early age of 69. I first met Dick years and years ago, long before he held his most recent post of Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. We had so many conversations, meetings, and trips over the years, as his career progressed, particularly during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Dick's skillful diplomacy that ended the siege of Sarajevo and finally ended that war is legendary. Nobody else could have done what he did. He was motivated above all by compassion, intent on stopping the suffering of innocent people who were being terrorized for no other reason than their ethnicity. He combined the force of his convictions with the force of his personality, along with his boundless energy, to do what others had been unable to do. Ambassador Holbrooke did not accept no for an answer. I remember meeting Dick in 1999. We had planned a meeting. I was in Macedonia, and he was in Kosovo. It was a very foggy, rainy day. We could not travel by helicopter, as we planned, so we met on a slippery, narrow road, with a several-hundred-foot cliff on one side. We sat together on the hood of a car and he described what he had observed. He told me what he believed needed to be done. It was fascinating because Dick put everything into perspective as only he could.…”