Armocide
Sticky issue. Bad time to be making principled, entirely justified semantic arguments about the events of 90 years ago. Especially considering the nature of many regimes past and present with which, for purposes of expediency in matters of more imminent concern, we have associated ourselves. Advice to Congress: Drop it. Listen to Holocaust survivor/resolution backer Lantos, the committee chairman, when he counseled against jeopardizing U.S. interests on a point of history at this particular point in history, before his emotions or something got the better of him and he voted for it. The point is made. Find some quiet ways to lean on Turkey. Tomorrow’s another day.
Advice to Turkey. Grow up.  Â
You like to consider yourself a modern nation. You want to be considered a European nation. In fits and starts, a little academic discussion is allowed, and then trials are held for “offending Turkishness” and critics are murdered. Considering the record, “offending Turkishness” starts to look more like a virtue than a crime. Turkey could change that in a moment. The Armenian genocide as an act of mass killing by the Turkish state is in fact well-established and indisputable. A quick summation of the above here.Â
Turkey can join the company of modern nations such as Germany, which has faced up to its wretched, murderous past. Such as the United States, which has going back decades now has recognized and attempted to atone in word, deed, law and government funds for the abuses of the past. Bent over backwards. So many others, impossible to name them all. Some have done a better job than others acknowledging and acting on the past. But they all have histories. Britain, France and Belgium. Australia. Italy. Spain. Russia. Rwanda. Erstwhile Turkish colony Serbia, whose mass slaughter is barely in the rearview but eager to shed its pariah status, has taken some token steps toward cooperation with war crimes prosecutors. Japan, still arguing over the details. Maybe not quite so vociferously as Turkey. Pakistan and India, both with tortured, bloody intertwined histories they aren’t quite done sorting out. The list is just too long. Burma, Indonesia, big, active issues. Among those most actively pressing their agendas, Sudan, Iran, China probably stand out as the greatest example of nations still headed in the wrong direction, re history. That’s a sordid list. Get off it.
Topics: history
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:51 am on Thursday, October 11, 2007
11 Responses to “Armocide”
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October 11th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
An “Armenian Resolution” was put forward some number of years ago in Congress, Turkey duly objected at that time, and the Resolution was killed.
It seems weak in the knees for the US Congress to put it forward again.
It also seems weak in the knees to try to placate our Turkish ally by knocking it down again.
The slaughter happened, those people have been dead for a very long time and no US Resolution is going to change any of that.
In more recent history, I believe there was some significant carnage by the Turks to “suppress” its own Kurdish population.
I think Turkey, with its new leadership, may well be moving in the “Muslim state” direction anyway. Turkey isn’t comfortable with any independently styled Kurdish population right over the border in Iraq, either.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I am reading a really good novel, MIddlesex. In this novel there is a description of the Turkish assault on Smyrna in 1922. The allies, not wanting to piss off Turkey stood by and did nothing to help those people.
For just about every genocide in modern times, there has been a complicit world standing by. So should there be a resolution against all those countries that did nothing?
October 11th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Never mind the misdeeds of past and present U.S. allies, we have no shortage of our own past misdeeds to remember and learn from. Even if incidents like the Trail of Tears were smaller in magnitude than what was done to the Armenians, the nature of the stain is the same. Congress shouldn’t be throwing stones in its glass House.
Congress needs to worry less about the Armenians, and more about the budget bills they have yet to pass. The total amount of time the Democratic leadership has wasted on futile symbolic gestures is appalling.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
So should there be a resolution against all those countries that did nothing?(,/i>
I support a Resolution against Europe for sitting around while Milosevic wreaked havoc in their own backyard.
(Maybe) I support a Resolution against the Hitler friendly Pope, although I’m not 100% on that one)
I support a Resolution that the UNITED STATES CONGRESS stop writing self congratulatory, self -righteous Resolutions and STOP filling their voluminous and wordy legislative endeavors with PORK !
October 11th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
How about just a resolution to stop any such atrocities in the future? No amount of hand-wringing and breast-beating is going to bring back the dead, or right all the wrongs, or undo all the brutalities, but we can still save the living if we just stiffen the spine and live up to our responsibilities. As far as nations go, only America and the coalition countries seem willing to do that.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
“Advice to Turkey. Grow up.”
well said Jules, and thank you for providing a principled, balanced post with valuable links.
I can’t help but see this as a nefarious Pelosi Reid effort to sabotage to the Iraq war and act sanctimonious for the cameras.
or as a poster Tim W. on CaptQuarter’s said:
This is actually a smart move by Pelosi for the following reasons:
1) She helps secure a voting block for the Dems and preserve a congressional seat.
2) She screws Bush and the Republicans over by getting them on the wrong side of the issue on moral grounds. She knows that Bush will have to oppose this because he will put national interests ahead of party interests.
3) She helps torpedo US foreign policy with the added bonus of the potential for additional chaos in Iraq.
4) She gets to claim that Bush has alienated yet another ally and that the Dems are needed to restore our reputation in the world.
5) She can do all of this while claiming the moral high ground.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
What is it about Moslems that makes them think they are above or beyond criticism, whichever applies in this case?
October 12th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Of course there was a massacre, by the late unlamented Ottoman Turks of as many Armenians and Greeks as they could do in. But that’s not the reason Pelosi is pushing this condemnation ( a bit late in coming). She is well aware there are crucial support functions the Turks are providing to US forces (at some risk of major disaffection from the Islamists in Turkey). She is also well aware that the Turks are unspoken allies in significant ways to the Israelis (inclkuding intelligence about Syria.
Her antagonims to Israel is palpable and well known.
She is also well aware that there is a delicate balance game going on in our trying to keep the lid on Kurds in Iraq who want to stir up revolt among the Kurds in Turkey.
Her goal is to make it impossible for US troops to stay in Iraq by creating an impossible political situation in Turkey (to make it look as though the US is insulting Turkey).
At other times in our history her behavior woiuld be accurately characterized as treason.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Web Reconnaissance for 10/12/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:35 am
[...] Jules Crittenden weighs in. The airbase that’s at stake, referred to by the 8 US secretaries of state, is [...]
October 12th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
It’s quite a position to see the “Armenian Resolution” as an intentional act by the democrat Congress to tank relations with an “ally” in the region, Turkey, and thereby attempt to undermine “the Iraq war” from another vantage point.
Nefarious, back door, sneaky…treasonous…come to mind to describe such machinations.