Letters to the Editor
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simply the truth
We ought to tell the truth, and the genocide resolution does that. If passing the resolution leads the Turks to show that they are not of a mentality that fits into Europe or the modern world generally, then showing that for all the world to see is a good thing. The US loses nothing if the Turks will not let us use their air base.
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Sorry Armenians, but this is complete nonsense
Yes, the Armenian massacre was attempted genocide. Yes, it was terrible.
However, the US government these days cares only about votes, oil, and symbolic gestures. Armenians aren't undergoing genocide right now. Other people ARE.
Instead of doing anything about genocides and attempted genocides occurring right now, it's oh so much easier to pass a feel good resolution about the Armenians.
Never mind that our government has never formally acknowledged our own genocide. Never mind that we're fomenting a genocide in Iraq.
Hey maybe 500 years from now we'll acknowledge the genocides in Africa that we are doing nothing to stop. Won't that be great?
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Ah the US, what a conflicted turkey
So let me see if I have this right; we can piss-off China by giving a humanitarian award to the Dalai Lama, but the same US is not willing to upset Turkey through a resolution expressing a humanitarian concern? Turkey will get over it, especially after we send them another $10 billion in hi tech weaponry; what a foreign policy! Ah the US, what a conflicted turkey.
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Re: Armenian War of Independence
Part of the problem with this whole issue, including Turkey's denial, is it allows for pseudo-historical crap like etyfreak's cynical disputation on the "Armenian War of Independence" to pass. Armenians, like other smaller nations in Europe, saw the break up of Europe's multi-national empires as a chance to assert their independence. This was not "part of WWI" but of a longer, broader historical process. No one -- no one -- contemporarily or historically has ever seen this as justification for slaughtering civilians en masse. There were instances of inter-ethnic clashes and murders in other territories, during and after the war, but none reached the scale of this calamity and none were sanctioned so clearly from the state.
And there are several recollections of Hitler referring to the Armenian massacre. I know that he never recorded these thoughts on paper, but he also never wrote down the idea of creating extermination camps to kill Jews and other undesirables. I nonetheless continue to believe he was complicit.
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No Armenian Geoncide Resolution. Democrats Retreat.
According to the NYT: "Until today, the resolution appeared to be on a path to House passage, with strong support from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California. It was approved last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But this evening, a group of group of senior House Democrats had made it known they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure."
Apparently, a backlash to the true motives of the Democratic Party in trying to bring this resolution to the floor have been exposed as purely political and audaciously irresponsible, designed solely to destroy our relationship with Turkey -- a country that's absolutely pivotal to our success in Iraq.
As Thomas Sowell pointed out this week at Real Clear Politics:
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct of that war.
"Large numbers of American troops and vast amounts of military equipment go to Iraq through Turkey, one of the few nations in the Islamic Middle East that has long been an American ally.
"Turkey has also thus far refrained from retaliating against guerrilla attacks from the Kurdish regions of Iraq onto Turkish soil. But the Turks could retaliate big time if they chose.
"There are more Turkish troops on the border of Iraq than there are American troops within Iraq.
"Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington to show its displeasure over Congress' raising this issue. The Turks may or may not stop at that."
Mr. Kamiya's tediously overwritten article it was transparent as the motives of the Democratic Party itself. In fact, it would have been laughable if American lives weren't at stake. Thank God, both efforts to get the resolution passed will now fail.
PS: Even Murtha lobbied Pelosi to stop it.
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Armenian genocide
What the failing Ottoman Empire did was terrible. But the Turkish Republic is not responsible for it anymore than the England-derived U.S. government is responsible for the crimes of Oliver Cromwell. Americans are responsible for their own very successful genocide, and I'm not so sure that we have officially acknowledged ethnically cleansing the lower 48 of its original inhabitants, a government policy that lasted decades instead of the months of ethnic cleansing practiced by the Ottomans against the Armenians. I may be ignorant of our policies to make things up to the few remaining Amerindians, and will be happy to have readers of this letter educate me in this regard. But unless those policies exist in effective implementation as well as politically correct speech, I would say that the US Congress is the last body that needs to lecture any other government or people about ethnic cleansing and genocide. Once we effectively deal with the remaining Amerindians, and then turn Henry Kissinger and a whole gaggle of Bushies over to the world court for war crimes tribunals, then maybe we will be in a place where our recognition of the sins of others is more than just very rank hypocrisy. Let's clean our own house before we pass along official advice to the neighbors.
Bill Lamb
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WWI
World War I was the greatest disaster the western world ever brought upon itself. The repercussions in the former Ottoman empire alone include the slaughter of civilian Armenians, the Diaspora, the expulsion of Greeks from Turkey and Turks from Greece and the Balkans, the rise of radical Islam, the Israel conflict, Iran and Iraq, and, lest we forget, communism in the Soviet Union, including Armenia. Maybe Armenia wants us to forget that they were our rival and later enemy from 1920 until 1991.
Armenia started in 1991 right where they left off in 1920, by going to war with their neighbors, and those who so oppose ethnic cleansing may want to look at Armenia’s human rights record with respect to the Azerbaijanis. I understand why the Armenians are now pushing for recognition, given that they aren't allied to our enemy the USSR anymore, but Turkey is still our ally, just as they were for most of the Cold War, and we should support our allies, just as Turkey is supporting us with access to our base in Incirlik and their airspace. I have nothing against the Armenians, but I have nothing for them either.
“There were instances of inter-ethnic clashes and murders in other territories, during and after the war, but none reached the scale of this calamity and none were sanctioned so clearly from the state.”
Yes, by a state that hasn’t existed for almost 90 years.
“I know that he (Hitler) never recorded these thoughts on paper, but he also never wrote down the idea of creating extermination camps to kill Jews and other undesirables. I nonetheless continue to believe he was complicit.”
Who’s being pseudo-historical now?