Letters to the Editor
-
Next?
I am pretty sure that the Kurds will appreciate this gesture.
-
yes...but...
Why now?
As another letter writer stated, with all the crap going down right now, why this resolution? Why not stop our own illegal slaughter overseas? Why not re-establish the rule of law in our own country? Why not retake the moral high ground by correcting our own actions, not just pointing fingers at others?
Don't actions speak louder than words? Won't the world see this as yet another example of loud-mouthed Americans saying one thing, but doing another?
In another time, this resolution would be a laudable act. Today, from this Congress, it is yet another round of cowardly evasion of the real issues threatening our republic.
-
Remember Darfur?
Why not use whatever power is available to Congress to stop a genocide that's ACTUALLY OCCURING on its watch? If debating the passage of a resolution that will do nothing for the dead victims of one genocide while thousands are being killed in real-time during another (Darfur) doesn't demonstrate the uselessness of Congress, I don't know what does.
-
It's a legitimate question, "Why now?"
I don't understand Pelosi's desire to once again make America view Democrats as a bunch of self-righteous dweebs weeping and whining about things that happened a hundred years ago. It's like Pelosi just can't wait to find another box of matches to light in a room full of powder kegs.
And Gary, I'm usually with you on most things, but not this.
A letter signed by every secretary of state saying this is harmful to our strategic interests is nothing to be sniffed at. That list includes Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright.
This gratuitous and useless non-binding resolution is supposed to do what? Restore "morality" to our dealings with foreign countries? Oh please. You'll need a step ladder to get down off of that high horse.
Enumerating the whole panoply of genocidal regimes this country has either supported or ignored would take too much time. Face the truth: we are no better or worse than any self-interested nation that has ever been.
So why now? The question was not answered by Gary's article. Of all the things the Democrats have on their plate, and when the lives of so many American troops are at stake, does Pelosi want to piss off the Turks? Over an issue of "morality"?
Pelosi and the deep breathers will get a warm glow of self-satisfaction over their holier-than-thou non-binding useless proclamation. But there will be a heavy price paid by others and at the end of the day, it changes nothing. It is as irrelevant to what's going on right now as the Peloponnesian War. The Turks and the Armenians will still hate each other's guts, just as the Jews and the Arabs do.
The only thing we get out of it is to wind up looking like hypocrites and having more people hate our guts for meddling and taking sides in a fight that is not ours.
-
Resolutions condemning genocide
Maybe the Turks should respond by passing resolutions condemning pretty much the entire history of American imperialism.... then we can shake hands, agree to play nice from now on, and they can get back to the Kurds, and we can get back to whatever the hell we're doing in Iraq.
Hey, anyone been reading Doonesbury lately ....?
-
What a coincidence!
A column presenting "the other side of the story" appeared in this morning's Chicago Tribune (of course). Did anyone here read this op-ed piece and, basing it on having better knowledge of this issue than myself, support or rebut it?
-
Gary Kamiya and Political Demagoguery
The Republicans brought up a similar resolution denouncing the Armenian genocide on purely moral grounds during the Clinton presidency. Clinton, however, called House Speaker Denny Hastert and asked him to shelve the resolution, citing the fact that we needed to maintain the right to fly over Turkish airspace as a matter of national security. Despite the fact that we weren't at war at the time, Hastert complied.
But now we ARE at war, Mr. Kamiya. And American lives ARE at stake. Are you actually asking us to believe that the Democratic Party's timing in resurrecting this resolution and bringing it to the floor is mere coincidence? Because I doubt your readers are really that stupid. Unfortunately, the motives of the Democratic Party in this matter are purely political and audaciously irresponsible, designed solely to throw a monkey wrench into our relationship with a country that's absolutely pivotal to our success in Iraq.
As Thomas Sowell points out today 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 as transparent as the motives of the Democratic Party itself. In fact, it would be laughable if American lives weren't at stake.
Let's be clear, bringing forth a Congressional resolution denouncing the Armenian genocide IS a moral duty that SHOULD have its day, but certainly not now, for the sake of political demagoguery, in the middle of the Iraq War.
Anyone interest in a rational take on this subject can read Thomas Sowell's "Sabotage in Wartime" in its entirety today at realclearpolitic.com
-
I'm just curious...
Has the U.S. Congress ever officially recognized America's own genocide against the Native Americans?
-
Will Kamiya support a bill on the Native American genocide?
I find bills like this of limited symbolic use but I agree the Armenian Holocaust is something the world must recognize and demand from Turkey full recognition and compensation.
However, it strikes me that this is the kind of activity western governments use selectively and for political purposes only. We'll never see a bill about the genocide against Native Americans throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in this country. And I doubt Kamiya will ever write an article about it.