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The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Congress to honor Holbrooke

In a rare instance of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives moved to pass a resolution Friday honoring the life and work of the recently departed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. The resolution (H.Con.Res 335) was sponsored by outgoing House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops Subcommittee chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), and cosponsored by incoming House Foreign Affairs chairwoman ...

By Josh Rogin

December 17, 2010, 12:42 PM

In a rare instance of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives moved to pass a resolution Friday honoring the life and work of the recently departed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

The resolution (H.Con.Res 335) was sponsored by outgoing House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops Subcommittee chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), and cosponsored by incoming House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Howard Berman (D-CA), and Mike Turner (R-OH). The bill is "a concurrent resolution honoring the exceptional achievements of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and recognizing the significant contributions he has made to United States national security, humanitarian causes and peaceful resolutions of international conflict."

"The passing of Ambassador Holbrooke on Monday, December 13th, is a great loss for the American people," Lowey said in a statement. "One of our nation’s most talented diplomats, Richard Holbrooke possessed a fierce determination and unsurpassed brilliance in advocating for American security, diplomatic, and development interests around the world – in Southeast Asia and post-Cold War Europe, at the United Nations, and most recently in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His exceptional accomplishments as a peace-maker, diplomat, writer, scholar, manager and mentor will define his legacy as one of the true great foreign policy giants of our time."

Ros-Lehtinen praised Holbrooke as "one of the most consequential world diplomats of the last half-century," and said that "his tireless work in pursuit of United States national interests and international peace have put us all in his debt."

After praising his career — which included two stints as assistant secretary of state, peace negotiator in the Balkans, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and service as U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan — Ros-Lehtinen called for reform of the United Nations and protection of Israel within its bodies.

"In New York at the UN, [Holbrooke] did much of the heavy lifting on Congressionally-led efforts to rein in UN spending, to make more equitable the dues paid by the United States, and to improve the standing of Israel in that multinational body," she said. "Sadly, those concerns have returned with a renewed urgency — with the need for fundamental reform of UN budget and the virulently anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council — and the Congress can only hope to have such a tenacious, principled partner in the future."

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin