"My time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience."
It was close to midnight on Jan. 20, 2009, and I was about to go to sleep when my iPhone beeped. There was a new text message. It was from Richard Holbrooke. It said, "Are you up, can you talk?" When I called, he told me that Barack Obama had asked him to serve as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He would work out of the State Department, and he wanted me to join his team. "No one knows this yet. Don't tell anyone. Well, maybe your wife." (The Washington Post reported his appointment the next day.)
I first met Holbrooke, the legendary diplomat best known for making peace in the Balkans and breaking plenty of china along the way, at a 2006 conference in Aspen, Colorado. We sat together at one of the dinners and talked about Iran and Pakistan. Holbrooke ignored the keynote speech, the entertainment that followed, and the food that flowed in between to bombard me with questions. We had many more conversations over the next three years, and after I joined him on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2007, we spoke frequently by phone.
Now, making his sales pitch, Holbrooke told me that government is the sum of its people. "If you want to change things, you have to get involved. If you want your voice to be heard, then get inside." He knew I preferred to work on the Middle East and in particular Iran. But he had different ideas. "This [Afghanistan and Pakistan] matters more. This is what the president is focused on. This is where you want to be."
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
