I sat next to a guy who was in the CIA as a young guy in late 60′s based in India. He later worked for Lehman Brothers when Holbrooke worked there. He said that he was friendly with Holbrooke and his girlfriend at the time Diane Sawyer, sometimes playing tennis with both. He said Holbrooke had a towering ego but was also a kind person and fiercely intelligent. Another guy at my table knew Holbrooke as well and traveled with him a few times when he was supporting Holbrooke’s team with policy advice. He said Holbrooke “surely had some kind of OCD” as he obsessed about details on the food, the motorcade meeting them upon their landing, and other small details. Perhaps it was this kind of near obsession with details, and his incredible drive to achieve, that led to the supposed stress-related death.

Anyway, the panel was fascinating, which wasn’t unexpected when you consider the mind-numbing problems of the region. The panel was comprised of several members of a task force that was supposed to produce a paper evaluating the situation and strategy of the U.S. government in the region. The panel gave a qualified endorsement of current strategy and expected that those who are critical of the war efforts and would like to draw down troop numbers and move towards a “light foot-print” and a “counter-terrorism-plus” strategy would become more vocal when the spring comes, the fighting intensifies, and U.S. casualties pick up.

I haven’t read the task force’s paper and don’t intend to because they needed to come to some consensus, which I think led to a somewhat bland and misleading “qualified endorsement”. Daniel Markey, a CFR fellow who follows the region, called the Karzai government a “failure” and the situation as “unsustainable”. Robert Grenier, former CIA station chief in Islamabad went even further. He described the government as “a criminal enterprise” that uses local appointees to perpetuate a system of patronage that lives off corruption. He said a radical decentralization of political power in Afghanistan, even if means empowering local warlords, is much better than the mafia government that exists (which does sounds like a CIA point of view).

But James Dobbins, a seasoned diplomat and currently at the RAND corporation, disagreed. He pointed out that Karzai has higher popularity ratings among Afghans than Obama does among Americans. He said that Afghans look around at their neighbors and their terrible governments, and recall the horrible 80s and 90s in their country, and see more security and stability and appreciate it.

None of the panelists had particularly ground-breaking views on how to curtail Pakistan’s double-dealing. The Pakistanis are playing both sides because they want influence after the Americans and NATO leave and fear an Afghan state that is more sympathetic to India. Peace with India would change that, but we all know that is a very tough proposition. In the meantime, the impasse will likely stay the same. James Dobbins darkly pointed out though that the relationship with Pakistan is only “one car bomb away” from becoming radically different.

Holbrooke said he was willing to answer questions about the military surge and the reasoning behind it, but stressed that his portfolio was on the civilian side of the Afghanistan/Pakistan issues. He said that he thought for years aid to Pakistan has been unbalanced, with a heavy bias towards military aid and not enough focused on civilian programs that will ameliorate the virulent anti-Americanism so widely prevalent there and help develop what is a shockingly backwards country.

Holbrooke insisted on introducing the 17 members of his team that occupied much of the first 2 rows on one side. People snickered a bit at this insistence, and some clearly thought it was a politician wasting time, but I thought it was extremely interesting to see the multi-disciplinary nature of his team, which has essentially every major US government office involved, aside from the CIA (though they were well represented in the crowd).

Two of the best moments were by journalists asking questions (which isn’t always the case at the CFR, where most of the talks are off-the-record). The first was by a Pakistani journalist from the Pakistan Spectator who practically leaped out of his seat to get the attention of Michael Gordon, the moderator and NY Times correspondent. The guy wanted to essentially declare that nothing would happen in the area unless the Kashmir issue was resolved and what was he doing about it. He spastically tried to lump in several questions but was cut off by Gordon. Holbooke was originally supposed to have Kashmir as a part of his portfolio but when the Indians got wind of it they went ballistic and it was taken away from him. The Indians freak out over perceived outside interference in the Kashmir question. Holbrooke, the cool character, told the dorky Pakistani that he “wasn’t working on the issue” and then moved on.

Shortly after that Pam Constable, who covers Aghanistan for the Washington Post, asked rather despondently if the US government was actually serious about trying to improve Afghan society and painted it in rather hopeless terms, referring to the “defiant self-destruction” that she claims to witness regularly there. Holbrooke, again Mr. Smooth, said that he was surprised to see Pam there, that he has only met her once but admires her reporting greatly and always asks for her when he’s in Kabul but is always told she’s out reporting from the hinterlands. He proceeded to tell her why the US was going to be succesful, and had a number of really interesting insights into the agricultural programs that the US is pushing now in Afghanistan, many in place of the opium destruction, which he called counter-productive as they drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban. He also pointed out that even in the US we have “defiant self-destruction.”

I wanted to try to introduce myself to Holbrooke at the end. Two friends of mine last year bought his former house in the Hamptons and I wanted to see what reaction I could get out of him if I mentioned some of the shenanigans that go on there regularly now. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who wanted a word with Richard and it didn’t happen.