It figures that the most influential Spokane native of the 21st century ran the last two Bloomsday races.

He is going to need every local runner’s best strategies to steer through the mess he’s striding into in Baghdad.

Ryan Crocker has been named the United States’ new ambassador to Iraq. It’s a dangerous, enormously difficult task we wouldn’t wish on anyone, actually, but we’re glad that someone with Crocker’s vast experience and discipline will tackle it.

Crocker attended McDonald and University elementary schools in the Spokane Valley, moved around the world with his Air Force family, and graduated from Whitman College in 1971. After graduation, he considered the Peace Corps but took the Foreign Service exam instead. He wound up with what the New York Times called “a record of Middle East and South Asia experience possibly unrivaled in the United States Foreign Service.”

Most recently the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Crocker is a career diplomat who has served in Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria. After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, he reopened the U.S. Embassy there. He also led the U.S. State Department’s Iraq-Kuwait task force during the Persian Gulf War.

Like so many Spokane natives, 57-year-old Crocker runs several miles in the early mornings. In Beirut, his runs were so risky that security guards jumped on bicycles to follow alongside.

In posts from Lebanon to Pakistan, Crocker has tackled the world’s hottest spots, becoming known for being tough-minded and supremely disciplined in the midst of the worst tragedies.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently described a scene after the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

“I came around the corner, and there was the American Embassy cut in half like a doll’s house, bodies hanging out of it, smoke belching,” Friedman told the Washington Post, “and the first person I saw staggering around in the ruins was Ryan, his sleeves rolled up, looking in the rubble.”

In 2002 then-Secretary of State Colin Powell assigned Crocker and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns with studying the risks of American military intervention in Iraq.

Their resulting memo accurately predicted the results of the present war: We’ve indeed unleashed old sectarian and ethnic conflicts, encountered a Sunni backlash and the interference of surrounding countries, and face the need to build a brand new political and economic system in Iraq.

Now Ryan Crocker’s the man charged with delving into the rubble that is now Iraq. We offer him our congratulations and gratitude.

This announcement gives Inland Northwest residents one more reason to pay close attention to the news from Iraq and to lend our prayer and support to those who live and work and fight there.

May this war end soon, may our region’s sons and daughters head home safely, and may it be during Crocker’s tenure that we cross the finish line to peace.