Yesterday the 29th of May was the Birthday of United States’ 35th President John F Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK. Like 3 other presidents before him, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, John F Kennedy was assassinated at the age of 46. He was sworn in as the 35th President at noon on January 20, 1961 and assassinated soon after, in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
American Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with his assassination but did not even get the chance to go to trial; he was shot two days later by Jack Ruby.
In his inaugural address John F Kennedy gave birth to that famous sentence that is quoted by all and sundry til today: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Today, one can only wonder if leaders and people alike in the Middle East region could take this maxim to the letter. Better still, it seems that this pithy motto would be better directed at some leaders and regimes than people.
JFK pointed out the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself and did so while being the second youngest president in the Whitehouse and the first to have been born in the 20th century.
The curse of assassinated presidents ended with JFK in the United States that day, but it seemed to only hail in the beginning of many assassinations in the Arab world. Many political leaders and activists have been killed in various Arab countries to date.
Lebanon and Iraq seem to have suffered the highest numbers of assassinations, mostly of their politicians during times of war. Egypt also cuts a swath in the fractured region for a high number of assassinations. Sadat being the most remembered. Prime ministers, presidents, PLO leaders and members, Hamas as well as Hezbollah leaders and members- no one has been immune from this epidemic of political assassinations that has plagued the region. Often political targets were assassinated in different countries, often during visits, as in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah figures.
The most recent assassination was that of Bin Laden who is now widely assumed the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. It seems that assassinations of American presidents has ended, only for assassinations outside of the States to continue with, ironically, the arguably complicit action by the United States itself.
