So Congress is about to vote today on a resolution calling the Armenian genocide a genocide. It's an interesting state of affairs that, 90+ years after the fact, this is still a Big Deal for both sides, the Armenians and the Turks. I am almost glad this is happening. It's going to be unpleasant in US-Turkey relations, but it's probably the only thing that will make this irritant go away. The Turks are wrong about this, and keeping quiet so as not to offend them is only buying a short respite from unpleasant ness at a long term cost to our moral credibility.
Next up: condemning Japanese war crimes... all of them.
Then, at some point, we can think about the Native Americans?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
H. Res. 106
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 2:07 PM
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9 comments:
The House panel voted 27-21 in favor of the resolution. It should now go on to the full House, where more than half the members are co-sponsors.
Let the Turks have their hissy fit and then it will become yesterday's news. And if it messes up Bush's foreign policy for the next 14 months, who cares--it's already a mess. In fact, this may be the best time. If you're going to play with matches, I guess you might as well do so while the house is already on fire...
Good point Dr. S. What else can do while the house is on fire? I like that idea of actually talking about Japan's deplorable actions in China (use of gas, biological weapons, sick experiments on humans etc).
Do we have any reason to piss off any other allies? Let's just get it all out of the way and start with a clean slate in 08.
All that is true, however, I would much rather us clean up our own house before condemning others. This kind of stuff has nothing to do with anything at this moment in time. It's all symbolic- unless we are trying to piss the Turks off or buy the Armenians off for some reason . . . like a pipeline. Although, the Turks are letting us use their air space. That might need to change for a while.
It will tick off the Turks, who have failed so far to tell their side of that story, but they will get over it. I have tried to get my Turkish friends to tell me about their side and they just get indignant and angry. And that is very odd because they don't normally get that way. So I never got much out of them accept vague statements that they had atrocities on their side as well.
Might as well piss off another conservative Islamic party. Why not?
There is no valid Turkish side of the story. Sometimes there is a right and a wrong.
Turkey's government ordered the murder of millions of Armenians. They couldn't defeat an enemy army (the Russians) in the field, so they attacked a civilian proxy. Then justified it by claiming that the Armenian civilians were supporting the Russians.
Turkey has gotten a free pass on this one for too long because of their importance to NATO and other western alliance networks.
All that said, US West is probably right to suggest that the timing of this is probably because increased interest in Armenia for some reason or because of participation in US politics by Armenian-Americans in California.
It's like ripping off a band-aid. Let's just get this over with. It's already been 92 years - waiting more obviously isn't going to help.
I want someone to ask Bush this question, "Would you support this bill if we didn't need Turkey as an ally right now?" If yes, it's craven to oppose it. If no, then give some principled reason why.
But let's not have a self-congratulatory party over all this. We have a long way to go in acknowledging and accepting historical wrongs.
It wouldn't have anything to do with Europe would it? I mean the French have made it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide. Maybe there is some sort of quid pro-quo. I am sorry, but I don't think this is coming from some desire to express remorse. I really think it is a political decision.
Oh, the timing of this is certainly a political decision.
It might have something to do with France but do the French really care enough about what we call the Turkish government's murder of 1.5 million Armenian civilians to give us anything we really care about?
I suspect US West's first guess about oil pipelines through Armenia and/or political pressure brought by American Armenian groups is more likely the source of this.
LTG (and probably Dr. S and Bell Curve) will remember this indication of how important Armenians are. We were at a trivia contest at a bar in Southern California and the question was "What is the capital of Armenia." Without any prompting the entire bar shouted in unison, "GLENDALE!"
It reminds me of Cuban-American politics. And normally I would say that giving in to such groups is a bad thing. But the reason for passing this bill is that, well, there's no principled reason not to do so. Conservatives babbling about "principle" all the time forget it really quickly when business ties to Turkey get brought up. Turkey has got to face the music on this someday, and the pressure to pass a bill like this will not abate unless the Turks voluntarily admit this historical crime, which they show no sign of doing. So just get it over with. It's not like the Armenian community is asking for sanctions or whatnot like the cubanos are.
Yes, and let's also point out here that it is a crime in Turkey to refer to the Armenian genocide.
Don't forget that Orhan Parmuk was imprisoned for "insulting the Turkish nation" or some such silliness for making some reference to this whole mess.
By the way, the Nobel Committee awarded Mr. Parmuk a Nobel Prize in Literature after his arrest to shine a light on the cowardly affrunts to liberty being perpitrated by the Turkish government.
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