Hans Habe: John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Hans Habe: Hiroshima-born realization of man’s destructibility by man
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Hans Habe
From The Wounded Land
Journeys Through a Divided America (1964)
Translated by Ewan Butler
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered because he dared to say that the richest country on earth was partly inhabited by an army of invisible beggars….
He was murdered…because he could not…under a democratic system, prevent generals, enemies of the state, warmongers and armament profiteers from propagating hatred in the newspapers, at meetings, on the radio and on television and from using these mass media like giant hypodermic syringes with which to inoculate the masses of the people.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered because he never assumed an obligation which he could not fulfill, never made a promise which he did not believe that he would be able to keep. He refused to undertake a “war of liberation” or commit himself to one because he was not prepared to deviate by a hairsbreadth from his pledged word. When he said “I am a Berliner” he meant it in the sense which the Romans, 2,000 years before, had meant civis Romanus sum – as a title of honor. He was murdered because this attitude provoked on the one hand the “what’s good is what’s good for America” brigade of isolationists and on the other the demagogues who favored a preventive war or “war of liberation.” They replied to his declaration of peace and freedom by declaring a war of hatred against him.
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“You know, I can’t help thinking of the years just before the war – 1938 or 1939 – when we never dared to close our eyes because we were afraid that the war might creep up on us in our sleep. We argued all night long, tried to do something about it, tried to get close to other people, laughed, quarreled, danced, waited for the dawn. we were frightened.”
For peace, against war: literary selections 