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Fifty years, yet the legacy lives on

Milia Ali
THIS week's column poses to be a chal-1 lenge. Because writing about John F. Kennedy (JFK), the iconic US president who remains one of the most enigmatic figures of history, is a complex task. On the other hand, how can I resist the urge to dedicate a column to one of the most fascinating world leaders on the fiftieth anniversary of
his death?
Despite the salacious disclosures about his personal life, and the controversies surrounding his presidential accomplishments, JFK's charisma endures. One may agree or disagree that he was central to the evolution of the American presidency from a mere chief executive to something much larger, one cannot ignore the JFK legacy and its impact on American domestic and foreign policies.
Much has been written about Kennedy's tragic assassination on November 22, 1963. As America commemorates his fiftieth death anniversary, the media is once again rife with conspiracy theories: "Did Oswald act alone or was he the front man for some country/ideological group/the mafia?" We may never know, and the purpose of this column is not to probe the mystery surrounding JFK's death. Rather, the key question that intrigues me is why the 1,036 days of the Kennedy presidency have been the subject of a stream of analyses, articles, documentaries and movies. Is it because he remains frozen in time as a youthful, vibrant, handsome president whose life was cut short unfairly? Or is it something deeper?
When the Kennedy assassination took place in November 1963, I was not mature enough to fully grasp the enormity of the tragedy. And I was 8,000 miles too far away from the scene of action. Fifty years later, as the world reviews JFK's life and presidency, I am at a stage in my life where resolute leadership carries a high premium since it's in short supply. Perhaps I am now in a relatively better position to fathom the impact of Kennedy's contribution to the US and beyond.
While opinions may vary on what makes him special, for me Kennedy is the president who averted a nuclear war. The world has never come so close to an apocalypse as during Kennedy's presidency. In his documentary The Untold History' of the United States, filmmaker/director Oliver Stone reveals that after the Bay of Pigs invasion JFK stood up to his generals and refused to embark on a nuclear attack on Cuba. Despite tremendous pressures from the Pentagon, Kennedy resisted pressing the button! Stone asserts that when the world teetered on the edge of a nuclear war, Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and Kennedy both acted like statesmen to prevent its occurrence - Khrushchev by removing missile sites from Cuba and Kennedy by secretly pledging to dismantle American sites in Turkey.
As a matter of fact, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy moved dramatically away from the Cold War rhetoric.
Film clips of his commencement address at American University in June 1963 reinforce his legacy as a president intent on peace. Kennedy urged graduates to think of Soviet citizens in human terms and talked about "general and complete disarmament, designed to take place by stages permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms."
On the domestic front, after a period of hiatus on civil rights legislation (which outlawed major forms of discrimination against minorities), Kennedy adopted the cause as a national imperative. He was triggered into action after witnessing the police brutality on African Americans during the Birmingham protest march. He went on air and declared: "The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights... one hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free ... And the nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all citizens are free." The fact that Kennedy's death bequeathed the honour of passing the Civil Rights Bill to Lyndon Johnson does not diminish his role in initiating this important legislation. America's first African American president is in many ways a gift of the Kennedy legacy.
Interestingly, history honours leaders who win wars and nations celebrate victory days. But we fail to acknowledge visionary leaders who have stopped wars from happening. The ones who "fought" for peace. I would like to pay my homage to President Kennedy as the president of peace — someone who prevented a conflict from escalating into a nuclear war. Even if this is Kennedy's only contribution to humanity, it's an achievement that posterity must honour. Especially at a time when the world is steeped in an arms race. In the words of Oliver Stone: "We owe him a great, great debt of gratitude. We wouldn't even be here talking if it hadn't been for him."
The writer is a renowned Rabindra Sangeet exponent and a former employee of World Bank.
E-mail: shiftingimages@gmail.com