R.I.P. Richard Holbrooke ~ Dean of Diplomats...

Sad to hear Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was laid low by an internal plumbing failure. Remarkable man, as many commentators and civic leaders have noted. Nicolas Kristof writes...

"There are lots of people who manage to get one big thing right in their careers, but Richard managed to be right and ahead of his time about any number of topics. He was certainly right about AIDS testing, even though initially the AIDS advocacy community resisted testing for fear of stigmatizing people; eventually, people came around to Richard’s side. Likewise, Richard was most famously right about the Balkans. The Dayton peace accord couldn’t have been achieved without Richard’s combination of intellectual brilliance, strategic and tactical mastery, and indefatigability, and countless lives were saved as a consequence. That was diplomacy at its finest. And he was right about Tibet, China and the need to empower women, among many other topics. Many people perhaps didn’t realize what a tireless advocate he was of educating girls and bringing women out of the margins of society into the mainstream."

And here's Charlie Rose's homage.