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The National Interest
"The Rudest Man I Ever Met"
by Hume Horan
. . . Looking back, one may fairly conclude that Habib-presented with an impossibly difficult Middle East conundrum-achieved results that, although partial, constituted a personal as well as a collective triumph. And in the Middle East, personality counts for a lot. Habib came with a reputation for expertise and personal toughness. He was also known as a straight shooter-someone who would give the same unvarnished opinion to each of the parties to the conflict. He was also an optimist who infected his colleagues with the belief that something could always be done about "it." He was pragmatic, but impatient with too much "laying groundwork." He'd say, "Forget the groundwork. Let's see if there isn't a little point of agreement we can reach", and then: "ok, let's see if we can build upon that."
Above all, Habib was tireless-and one important lesson we can draw from Boykin's account is that to be a successful Foreign Service Officer and a successful negotiator, you have to be enduring. Negotiating is as much a physical as it is an intellectual activity. Finally, one can say that Habib, without giving up anything of substance, worked well with Arabs. They found him quick and congenial. "Dammo khafif" ("His blood is warm"), they would say, meaning that he had the personal skills to be accepted even when he told his interlocutors frank and disagreeable things. . . .