Transcript of eulogies honoring Phil Habib

Henry Kissinger

I met Phil Habib when I was invited by Ambassador Lodge to Vietnam to write a report on the situation as I saw it. I walked into Phil's office and he said "I'll bet you're one of these Harvard smart alecks who thinks he knows everything."

"I won't talk to you," he said "until you've visited a number of the provinces, and then I may talk to you." Phil was irreverent, he was dedicated, he was the ideal Foreign Service Officer.

The foreign policy of the United States does not depend on any one administration. The national interests and the basic values of the United States are permanent. But our political system encapsulates it into brief periods, and it is the Foreign Service that has to provide continuity, analysis, and integrity to the permanence of our foreign policy.

I know no one who embodied these values better than Phil Habib. He believed that there was some relationship between the views he held and the decibels with which he expressed it. And so, no respecter of personalities, he would present his view in an occasionally seemingly truculent manner.

But those of us who knew him and loved him knew that he was our conscience. After he had had his say, he would execute the decisions efficiently, loyally, without any attempt to reverse them by the usual Washington methods. He was an idealist who knew that foreign policy must deal with necessities.

But in the end, its dilemmas can only be resolved by strong moral convictions.

I saw him twenty-four hours before he died at the Bilderburg Conference. I was sitting with an outside friend who had come and Phil came up to me to say goodbye and he said, "Boss you're getting too fat. You know when you've had a heart problem, you've got to take care of yourself."

And I said to my friend, "Phil was my conscience, even if he brutalized me from time to time." And Phil said, "What I am really proud of is not the policies we did together, but that after you left, I saw to it that Secretary Vance and you remained in close and frequent contact."

To Phil, foreign policy and the Foreign Service represented the meaning of his life, never to be confused with any one person. He was asked at that Bilderberg Conference to explain where America stood at this stage of its history. And he wound up his remarks with the following sentences which are the transcript.

So what we are facing now is a new order of prioritites. It is not neo-isolationism. People in the United States still recognize the responsibilities that our country enjoys as we move in the so-called unipolar world. They are delighted that the prospect of a nuclear exchange no longer seems likely in the immediate future. But as they look at the world, they think not only in geopolitical terms.

[Lc]

They worry more about such things as environment, technology transfer, nuclear proliferation, population problems.

A few years ago, the leaders looked down their noses at Jimmy Carter and human rights. Now they have to change their minds because the American people began to believe and act upon the feeling that human rights are an important factor for them to consider as part of what kind of world it wants to live in. The American people are going to be interested in the manner in which governments deal with their own people.

I'll quote another President for you. This time a Republican. Theodore Roosevelt once said that if we have to choose between rightousness and peace, he would choose rightousness. I may sound chauvenistic to you Europeans, but in my opinion when you take American opinion, it will come down on the side of rightousness and the right thing to do.

And that's why the foreign policy which we will pursue will be based on cooperation, moderation, stability, the absence of hostility between nations, and when hostilities break out, for America to try to end it.

Dean Acheson once said about Harry Truman that he was a Yale man in the best sense of the word.

Phil Habib was a patriot, a marvelous representative of a Foreign Service often described as elitist.

With all the qualities of dedication and sense of service, my friend Joe Alsop used to say of Phil Habib that he was in truth the last of the wasps.

Cyrus Vance

Phil Habib was one of my closest friends, and I will miss him terribly, more than I can say.

We met twenty-four years ago when Averell Harriman and I were sent by President Johnson to represent the U. S. at the Vietnam peace talks. I had never met anyone quite like Phil before.

As you all know, he came on strong, but inside there was no gentler, more compassionate man. Phil Habib was as devoted a public servant as any person I have ever known. And he made foreign policy his life's work. But he never lost sight of the people, sometimes in the millions around the world whose lives were vitally affected by what America did.

Phil always tried to push negotiations to their limits because the alternatives to negotiation were often war and great human suffering, and he had experienced both. Phil had seen war at first hand as a soldier in Europe.

And the holocaust had a special meaning for him as well, because he grew up as a Maronite Catholic in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn where almost every family lost friends and relatives in the Nazi death camps.

He served in Seoul at a time when the memories of the Korean war were still fresh, and then in Saigon as the Vietnam war was raging. Toward the end of his career, Phil tried to save his beloved Lebanon from further destruction, and then made an effort to find a negotiated solution to the conflicts in Central America.

As I found when I inherited Phil as Under Secretary for Political Affairs from Henry Kissinger in 1977, one of Henry's most important bequests to me, foreign policy was not an abstraction for Phil. He did not believe much in geopolitical theories or in the rarefied atmosphere of government bureaucracies or universities. Foreign policy, Phil argued, should be made by men and women who have dictated themselves to understanding foreign countries and it should reflect basic American interests and values.

The highest compliment Phil would bestow on any of us was, "professional." The greatest insult," amateur."

But if Phil were here, he would now be very impatient with me. Cy, he would say, that's enough about me. Remember that I was only a Foreign Service Officer doing my job.

And then he would insist that I say something about his Foreign Service, our country's splendid Foreign Service. After his obligations to the President and Secretary of State, nothing about his career mattered more to Phil than the U. S. Foreign Service. He was obsessed by it, sometimes enraged by it, but always defending it.

Phil railed at what he regarded as his country's failure to understand how well the Foreign Service could defend U. S. interests abroad if given a fair chance to do so. He berated politicians, political appointees and the press for denying the Foreign Service a front row seat in the high councils of government.

But he also challenged the Foreign Service to earn its place at the table by becoming indispensable, as he was, to decision makers. Phil Habib inspired all of us. He shunned recognition as long as he lived, and I know he will continue to do so in the after life.

None of us had enough time with Phil, even his family represented here today by his widow, Marjorie, his daughters, Phyllis and Susan, and his granddaughter, Merritt. But at this time of grief, we can take some small comfort that Phil will not disappear from our lives. He was too special, too important, too good to be away from us. He will remain with us in spirit and in heart forever.

[Lc]

Ghassan Tueni

In this age of trial and uncertainty, there is more between
Lebanon and Philip Habib, more and beyond the classic story of
love, resentment and nostalgia. To us, a little and old country,
Philip Habib was yet another prophet, but one who was physically
bringing back peace from the America of which his people
dreamt for generations past.

There was pride, though fraught with tragedy. Pride and
confidence in the beloved son who could earn its recognition and
concern and be above all a peace conference all by himself. He
was our giant in the game of the diplomacy of the times would
somehow never learned. Able to negotiate with presidential
imperial authority an agreement between armies and nations at war
with each other, between parties that could not even talk to each
other, the Israilies, the Palestineans, the Syrians, and, of
course, the Lebanese.

In one historic instance, they were made to disengage and
withdraw without even a piece of paper to sign.

Are there moments, I wonder, are there moments in
the history of diplomacy and international relations when courage
simply does not pay? Somehow Philip Habib could neither believe
this nor accept it. Hence he never understood how, when calling
on some to invest more courage than they really had, what you
earn is fear, not love, and distrust rather than respect.

Those of us who had the privilege of working with Phil, as I
did in our darkest days, have learned many lessons, but none
superior to this. That truthfulness and pragmatic realism should
not preclude sincerity and, above all, concern for the other
parties legitimate interests, the stubborn belief that the seeds
of peace can be cultivated in the most arid soils of warriors,
dictators, or even terrorists.

In long evenings, aging wine and good food helping, between
or even during meetings, I recall Philip probing friends with
questions about enemies. What is the minimum point of encounter
from which we can work with the hope of reaching a first, simple
matter-of-fact agreement that could be broadened little by little
into an area of understanding, no matter how limited and modest.

Later, much later, so what, would he say. Shall we overcome
hatred, ideologies, fanaticism, and all the major obstacles. Was
Philip Habib a dreamer? Oh no. He was in his laughing and quiet
manner a man of passion and zeal. Above all, a believer who
accepted with great generosity the weaknesses of human nature as
well as the folly, but was dedicated to overcome both by courage
and wisdom.

The wise man walks in our midst says Kahlil Gibran, bearing
his heavy yoke, yet it is softer than the breath of a flower and
gentler than the breezes of Lebanon.

[LC]

Proud to be American, Philip Habib could tell Lebanon, the Arabs, and Israel how much wisdom was missed in their relations. Having grown up, as he loved to remind us all, from being a poor boy in a poor neighborhood of Brooklyn to being called upon to share the knowledge and burdens of ultimate statesmanship, he valued as none the precious achievements of cities and nations.

And as no one else, he despised those who could destroy a city and boast about it, waste the fabric of societies, nay even of worlds of culture knitted together over the centuries, and unperturbed kill God's gift to nature, the human being, children, woman, man, the innocent and oppressed.

Resolute and gentle, firm but loving, Philip's ambition was to convey the message of his dual heritage, reaching the deeper recesses of the heart, but appealing as well to the rigorous logic of the mind. Many may now regret that he left behind him peace in Lebanon and the Middle East a business unfinished, an unfinished symphony.

Yet the nobility of the endeavor remains, in part, as Gibran also says, because the significance of man is not in what he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain.

From the Lebanon which is still captive, a hostage of both war and peace, I bring our prayers and a promise that never shall we forget those who toiled with us, those who with us were hostages in our land, and those who with us died for a better world and our common ideals.

So let the memory of our dead be a cry to America that never, never should men who come here century after century be yearning for liberty, never should they lose hope or faith.

5

[Lc]

Lawrence Eagleburger

Today we mourn the passing of a unique American and a unique Foreign Service Officer.

I'm honored to represent Secretary Baker at this ceremony and also to represent the Foreign Service, an institution which however maligned, did produce a Phil Habib and which however scorned was loved by a Phil Habib.

Most of all, however, I am here to mourn Phil as a colleague and as a friend. It is customary on occasions such as this to emphasize the deceased's virtues and minimize his faults. In Phil Habib's case, however, the task is difficult inasmuch as Phil's faults and virtues tended to be one and the same, his candor, his courage, and on occasion his downright cussedness.

But I am certain that Phil would prefer us anyway to remember him exactly as he was, warts and all. Indeed anything less would have brought forth the top of the lungs eloquence we all came to know so well. And so I have to begin by confessing that to be Phil's friend was to have done battle with him, not once or twice, not in one venue or one crisis, but at all times and in all places, even in retirement.

He was as tough as they come and I have the scars and the bruises to prove it, as do most of us here today. They say that in Washington, nothing ever gets settled permanently. But I have been on the losing end of enough battles with Phil Habib to testify differently.

There was, for example, the superb Persian rug which lay in my office during the Kissinger era, but which I knew Phil coveted. I was a beaten man, however, the day Cy Vance picked Phil to become his Under Secretary of State. And so on inauguration day, I rolled up that carpet, carried it down the hall on my shoulder, and burst into Phil's office where he was watching the inauguration ceremonies on television.

Dumping it on the floor, I yelled at him, and I have for obvious reasons used poetic license, "all right you son of a gun, here's your darn rug," or words to that effect. We both knew that I had merely preempted the inevitable.

But Phil was no bully. To those who worked under him, he inspired lifelong loyalty and fanatical devotion. Phil rather preferred rather to pick on his superiors. He was, for example, one of the very few people I ever knew who could bring Henry Kissinger to a screeching halt.

Henry would begin a meeting by announcing his decision on the question at hand. And there would be Phil Habib bellowing that the Secretary of State had no right to act without first hearing him out.

6

[L]

I should add that I tried the same tactic with Henry on more
than one occasion, but it never seemed to work for me. And Phil
was just as candid and bold with his ultimate bosses, the
Presidents of the United States whom he served so well.

It is hard to believe we are talking about a Foreign Service
Officer. Alas, almost everything conspires against the emergence
of a Phil Habib in the Foreign Service, from the promotion system
to the practice of diplomacy, to the politicians who decry
timidity and conformity in the Foreign Service, but in fact will
usually tolerate nothing else.

Part of Phil's secret, of course, was his strength of
character. He was a man of real passions and opinions which the
system miraculously never managed to squeeze out of him. But
more importantly, Phil Habib was driven by the need to conform to
something higher than mere ambition. He needed to conform to his
own conception of what the Foreign Service was all about.

For Phil, the Foreign Service was an elite, not of the
pinstriped and the pampered, but of experts in a given field. He
believed FSOs had one overriding duty - to render honest
judgments on the basis of their expertise. They were paid in
short to tell it like it is regardless of the preconceptions of
superiors, regardless of the consequences for one's career.

And for this, a Foreign Service Officer needed guts, guts to
walk into Beirut under seige, guts to walk into the Oval Office,
or up on the Hill and tell the truth as he saw it.

Still the queston remains as to how Phil got away with such
independence. I think Les Gelb in his recent op-ed article put
his finger on at least a part of the answer, namely Phil's
conviction that the FSO whose first obligation was to speak his
piece had an equal obligation thereafter to hold his peace and
implement loyally and unquestioningly whatever decision his
political superiors arrived at.

Phil's loyalty and patriotism were such that he enjoyed the
confidence of Presidents of both political parties, which is,
after all, the way it should always be in the Foreign Service.
But Phil had another secret as well. He knew how to operate with
his fellow Americans, including such eccentric types as
Congressmen and Senators, and even with his fellow FSOs.

Phil understood that it was not enough to sparkle in the
salons of Paris if you could not get down and dirty in D. C.
This street smart New Yorker knew that the FSOs ultimate test was
his ability to be effective at home as well as overseas.

I cannot tell you that Phil succeeded in his every endeavor.
The older he got, the more Presidents tended to hand him missions
impossible. But those of us who practiced diplomacy, or at least
tried to practice diplomacy, know that in most cases, we are
confronted with situations without solutions, and that our task
is often to work for the better rather than the best and above
all to avoid the worst.

7

They say that war is the failure of diplomacy, and in this
sense Phil was as responsible as anyone I know for our nation's
greatest diplomatic triumph, the winning of the Cold War by
peaceful means.

But his greatest legacy, I think, is to be found among the
legions of FSOs who worked for him and whom he inspired. To them
he held aloft not the image of a spoiled Foreign Service critics
loved to ridicule, but of an honest and courageous Foreign
Service critics appreciate even less.

Those FSOs will keep the spirit of Phil Habib alive and pass
it on to the next generation of American diplomats. They will
keep alive above all the lesson of Phil's career; that you can
have guts after all and still succeed in the Foreign Service and
in the process serve the best interests of this great democracy
of ours.

Phyllis Habib

On behalf of my mother and my sister and I, I would like to
thank you all for being here today in honoring my father. It's
something to stand up here and see all of you to listen to what
our distinguished friends have had to say about my Dad. What you
all need to remember is that you were as much my father's family
as we were and that he loved you all very much, and he was very,
very, very proud to be a Foreign Service Officer. Thank you.

Henry Kissinger

## Cyrus Vance

[LC]

As I found when I inherited Phil as Under Secretary for Political Affairs from Henry Kissinger in 1977, one of Henry's most important bequests to me, foreign policy was not an abstraction for Phil. He did not believe much in geopolitical theories or in the rarefied atmosphere of government bureaucracies or universities. Foreign policy, Phil argued, should be made by men and women who have dedicated themselves to understanding foreign countries and it should reflect basic American interests and values.

[LC]

Ghassan Tueni

Lawrence Eagleburger

Still the question remains as to how Phil got away with such
independence. I think Les Gelb in his recent op-ed article put
his finger on at least a part of the answer, namely Phil's
conviction that the FSO whose first obligation was to speak his
piece had an equal obligation thereafter to hold his peace and
implement loyally and unquestioningly whatever decision his
political superiors arrived at.

Phyllis Habib

JUN 11 '92 10:17 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger:

I met Phil Habib when I was invited by Ambassador Lodge to Vietnam to write a report on the situation as I saw it. I went into his office, and he said, "I bet you are one of these Harvard smart-alecks who think they know everything. I won't talk to you," he said, "until you visit a number of the provinces, and then I may talk to you." Phil was irreverent, he was dedicated, he was the ideal Foreign Service officer.

The foreign policy of the United States does not depend on any one administration. The national interest and the basic values of the United States is permanent, though our political system encapsulates it into brief periods, and it is the Foreign Service that has to provide continuity, analysis, and integrity to the permanence of our foreign policy. I know no one who embodied these values better than Phil Habib.

He believed that there was some relationship between the views he held and the decibels with which he expressed them, and so, no respecter of personalities, he would present his views in an occasionally seemingly truculent manner, but those of us who knew him and loved him knew that he was our conscience. After he had his say, he would execute the decisions efficiently, loyally, and without any attempt to reverse them with the usual Washington methods. He was an idealist who knew that foreign policy must deal with necessities, but in the end, its dilemmas can only be resolved by strong moral convictions.

I saw him 24 hours before he died, at the Bilderberg Conference. I was sitting with an outside friend who had come, and Phil came up to me to say goodbye, and he said, "Boss, you're getting too fat. You know, when you've had a heart problem, you've got to take care of yourself." And I said to my friend, "Phil was my conscience, even if he brutalized me from time to time." And Phil said, "What I am really proud of is not the policies we did together, but that, after you left, I saw to it that Secretary Vance and you remained in close and frequent contact."

JUN 11 '92 10:16 FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL

P. 1

FOREIGN SERVICE
JOURNAL

The magazine for professionals in foreign affairs

• published by the American Foreign Service Association

June 11, 1992

TO: Dr. Kissinger's Office

FROM: Anne Stevenson

tel: 202/338-4045, fax: 202/338-6820

Many thanks for your help in asking Secretary Kissinger's permission to use this in our July issue. The other contributors we have are Secretaries Baker, Vance, and Shultz; Deputy Secretary Eagleburger; Ambassadors Hill, Negroponte, McNeil, Bray, Eliot, O'Donohue, Miller, and Abramowitz; and Foreign Service officer Thomas Miller. Most of the contributions are quite short, but we would like to use this longer portion of Secretary Kissinger's eulogy, along with a portion of the deputy secretary's.

We are anxious to have this in the magazine because it speaks so eloquently, even movingly, of the Foreign Service and what Habib meant to the profession.

As I mentioned, however, I need to hear by tomorrow, one way or another.

Again, thanks for your help.

2101 E STREET N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20037 • TELEPHONE (202) 338-4045
ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT (202) 338-4054