A podium to speak and heal, not wound further

When the world despairs about what Washington DC and Tel Aviv have done in these fiery times, recalling utterances by former US presidents that underlined humanity's quest for peace

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address is made of ideas and words we can hardly believe came from where they did. Every paragraph of that speech crafted by Kennedy is of epic voltage.

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oused have we become to the current standard of comments, posts and speeches emanating from the White House that we forget the great thoughts and words that have come from previous occupants of that august residence of the US president.

Heading this list is the all-time great Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln (1863) and, less known but no less moving, his Second Inaugural. Lincoln said at the end of that very brief address, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Does America recall those words which apply today to the wounds of battle, the widow and the orphan the ongoing war has created, in all the nations afflicted by the conflict? Iam sure much of America does.

And then there is Franklin D Roosevelt's First Inaugural of 1933, a very different speech from Lincoln’s 70 years earlier, but still endowed with an ethical vision. FDR said, “I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbour — the neighbour who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others — the neighbour who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbours.”

John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address is made of ideas and words we can hardly believe came from where they did. Every paragraph of that speech crafted by Kennedy is of epic voltage. I will cite three of them.