Letter From America
Thank you, Senator Ted Kennedy!
Senator Edward Kennedy, diagnosed with malignant brain tumour last month, is expected to beat it and live many more productive years. This may be an opportune time for reflection, and expression of Bangladesh's gratitude to the senator from Massachusetts.
Let us flash back to Bangladesh's war of liberation in 1971. Besides India, Bangladesh had few, if any, supporters or advocates. While countries like Australia and the UK were sympathetic to the electoral wrongs and atrocities committed against the Bangladeshis by the Pakistanis, superpowers like China and the US were hostile to Bangladesh.
As it was Pakistan's staunch ally against India, Bangladeshis did not expect much from China. That America, the world's second largest democracy, was fully in the democracy-destroying Pakistan's corner was a huge disappointment. More so, because Sheikh Mujib was generally perceived to be "pro-American."
Eager to make overtures to China, President Richard Nixon and the National Security Advisor, Henry "Bangladesh is a basket case" Kissinger, found Bangladesh's independence struggle an impediment to America's geopolitical interests at that time. For interfering with Kissinger's grand plans for glory with a liberation struggle, Kissinger developed a pathological dislike of Sheikh Mujib.
What kept Bangladeshis' faith in America was the American press's relentless criticism of Pakistan, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Beatle George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" in New York, and the pressure applied to Pakistan by legislators like Senator Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy visited Bangladeshi refugee camps in India and burst into tears on seeing their suffering. After independence, Senator Kennedy visited Bangladesh in 1972 and addressed students at Dhaka University campus.
That Senator Kennedy would come to the aid of Bangladeshis at the most critical time in their history was not a surprise. Although fabulously rich, the Kennedys have always looked out for the poor and the oppressed.
After Franklin D. Roosevelt enticed the blacks away from the Republican Party ("Lincoln's Party") with the New Deal, John F. Kennedy consolidated the black vote as the most reliable block of Democratic Party supporters. In 1960, blacks voted overwhelmingly for John Kennedy, who promised them civil rights; a promise that was kept by his vice-president Lyndon Johnson after John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
On April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy, who had decided to run for the presidency a month earlier, was scheduled to address a gathering of African Americans in Indianapolis.
He had just learned that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated, something his black audience did not know. Police advised RFK that it was too dangerous. Kennedy insisted on going ahead and giving them the bad news himself.
In one of the great speeches in American history, Robert Kennedy said, among other things: "For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man."
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black." (Sounds a lot like Barack Obama)
Blacks applauded Kennedy's three-minute speech! Such is the Kennedy magic that at a moment of black rage, when any white man's life would have been in danger, Robert Kennedy elicited applause from a ghetto audience.
Tragically, two months later, on June 5, Robert Kennedy, too, was assassinated. (Last week, Hillary Clinton stupidly cited RFK's assassination in June as one of her rationale for staying in the race so long.)
Ted Kennedy also has that magic. When Senator John Kennedy was elected president in 1960, Edward Moore Kennedy was under 30, (born February 22, 1932), therefore, ineligible to fill JFK's Senate seat.
A family friend kept the seat warm until Ted crossed 30 and could run in 1962. Teddy Kennedy's Republican opponent had it right: "If your name was Edward Moore, not Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidature would have been a joke!" Harvard-educated Teddy won.
After RFK's assassination, Ted Kennedy became the surrogate father to both JFK and RFK's children. When President Kennedy's widow Jackie Kennedy wanted to marry the Greek tycoon Aristotle Onasis in 1968, Ted Kennedy negotiated the nuptial terms: financial, as well as a strict ban on procreation! (Jackie was 39)
Teddy Kennedy saw the clan through all their tragedies, (the latest of which was the plane-crash death of JFK's only son John in 1999), which impacted his presidential ambitions negatively. Kennedy unsuccessfully attempted to wrest the nomination away from sitting Democratic President Carter in 1980.
What really destroyed Kennedy's presidential aspirations was the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969. Kennedy was driving a car with Mary Joe Kopechne as his passenger when the senator drove off Dike Bridge into the channel between Chappaquiddick Island and Martha's Vineyard. The Senator swam to safety, but Kopechne died in the car.
Kennedy left the scene and did not call authorities until after Kopechne's body was discovered the following day. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to two months in jail, suspended.
After returning to the Sentae in 1980, Kennedy dedicated himself to prdigious legislating. Forming alliances with the Republicans when necessary, Ted Kennedy has become one of the most successful legislators in the US Senate's history. Legislations sponsored by Ted Kennedy have touched the lives of every American in a positive way.
By endorsing Barack Obama, Senator Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy and (Teddy's son) Congressman Patrick Kennedy symbolically passed the Kennedy torch to Obama on the dais of American University in Washington, DC, the site of President John Kennedy's graduation speech in 1963.
One wishes and prays that Senator Ted Kennedy is around to see a Kennedy protégé take over the White House should Barack Obama be elected president in November.
Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed is a Rhodes Scholar and a Daily Star columnist.
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