One of the dumbest things that Congress does is to issue ‘senses of the Senate’ and ‘resolutions of the House’. Just this week, the House voted on a resolution “Denouncing the practices of female genital mutilation, domestic violence, honor killings, and other gender-based persecutions and expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that participation, protection, recognition, and independence of women is crucial to achieving a just, moral and honorable society.” It passed 378-0. It has no legal effect whatsoever. Sometimes these resolutions do have some political effect. For example, I am a big fan of Rep. Patrick Murphy (PA-08), but he pissed me off this summer with H.Res 467.
Today, the House of Representatives passed Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy’s (D-8th District) resolution that repudiates the University and College Union (UCU) of the United Kingdom for their boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This was Rep. Murphy’s first resolution to receive a vote on the floor of the House and it received unanimous bipartisan support.
All that vote did was make every member of the House vote to support Israel out of fear that they be targeted by pro-Israeli forces. That the vote was unanimous underscored that the resolution was unnecessary. It was just a cudgel to beat down any hint of debate over Israeli policy.
And it’s in the same context that I am unimpressed with the House Foreign Affairs Committee decision to ‘resolve’ yesterday that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians in the World War One era. That decision caused Turkey to recall their ambassador for ‘consultations’. Military consultations have also been canceled, and American tourists in Turkey have been warned they might become targets. In addition:
About 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military in Iraq. U.S. bases also get water and other supplies by land from Turkish truckers who cross into the northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Did Turkey commit genocide against the Armenians? The historians’ consensus is ‘yes’, yes they did. Does it matter at all whether or not the Congress ‘resolves’ that the Turks committed genocide? No, no it doesn’t. All the resolution accomplishes is a rift with a vital ally at a very difficult time for our country.
The problem isn’t with Congress telling the truth about a historical tragedy. The problem is that these stupid resolutions are a waste of time and they almost never do anything positive.
I guess the Armenians are feeling a warm fuzzy feeling. Is it worth it?
Why take the risk of attempting real change (and possible election defeat) when you can just give the illusion that something is actually being accomplished.
Why take the risk of attempting real change (and possible election defeat) when you can just give the illusion that something is actually being accomplished.
That pretty much sums up this congress.
I do have to say that the Armenian genocide vote is highly entertaining, and exposes how much of the Iraq thing is held together with duct tape and chewing gum.
You’ve got Pweznit Compassion out there alternatively pleading and bullying congress not to pass this worthless resolution, because he knows the results endanger his precious war, either through Turkish refusal to cooperate (and they didn’t support the war anyway) or throguh getting the Turks angry enough that they roll across the border and start blowing things up.
And because the democrats could give a rats ass about Mr. Bush, and because the GOP cares less and less for him each day, they pitched the motherfucker an anvil.
Bright move? who fucking cares at this point. The war’s been lost for a long time.
Man. They really oughtta put forth a House Resolution denouncing Resolutions of the House, and a similar Sense of the Senate measure regarding Sense of the Senate measures.
In a way the resolution may make it hard for the USA to fight this “War on Terra”… Which may make it even harder for them to stay in Iraq without Turkish support.
IMHO, wait and see what the real ramifications of this maneuver really are. It may amount to nothing and, literally, be a waste of time… It may cut the legs out from under the warmongering GOP.
Just some thought for food.
What bothers me most about the Turkey resolution is the glaring fact that the US is in no position to accuse anybody else of genocide just now. We’d look a lot less asinine if we focused on the genocide we’re committing right now instead of bloviating about something that happened generations ago.
Or the genocide that the country owes its very existence to. But then again, historical moral fingerpointing is a dangerous exercise in the first place, since we were all barbarians once. The danger is that countries that deny the dark shadows of their pasts — the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks, of the American Indians by the United States, of the Chinese by the Japanese — deny themselves an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and thereby not make them anew.
But humility has always been the handmaiden of learning. The substitution of comforting myths for unpleasant facts in the aftermath of Vietnam has ensured that we are fighting the very same war all over again.
l would venture that ‘warm and fuzzy’ isn’t what the americans living, working or visiting in turkey are feeling:
especially since the turks already have deep distrust of the us: 83% neg. 9% pos.
another exercise in pointless stupidity…whatever happened to the overriding sense of urgency about the appropriation bills needing to be attended to?
lTMF’sA
“Did Turkey commit genocide against the Armenians?”
It was my belief that the proIsrael forces you mentioned in another context were actually against the Armenian genocide resolution for fear that someone might actually have the decency to propose a similar resolution condemning the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. But of course with most dancing to its tune, AIPAC has nothing whatsoever to fear.
As long as the deserts are full of Indian reservations, Shergald, the US is in no position to say much about Israel. If anything, the success of the US in this matter should stand as encouragement to the butchers of Jerusalem.
Excellant point. For that matter, the Armenian resolution is possibly an embarrassment considering the quasi or slow genocide of the Native American that occurred after the Revolution. Perhaps the only difference is that we acknowledged it somewhere along the way, eventually, didn’t we?
In addition, I only learned a few years ago that Native Americans were used as slaves, just as imported native Africans were. Why did that knowledge take so long in coming?
Perhaps the only difference is that we acknowledged it somewhere along the way, eventually, didn’t we?
School textbooks are still a little light on details, and still lionize people like Andrew Jackson. They also neglect to discuss how sophisticated Cherokee civilization was by the time it was forcibly liquidated to gain access to gold deposits in Georgia, gold you can see on the gilded dome of the state capitol today.
In addition, I only learned a few years ago that Native Americans were used as slaves, just as imported native Africans were. Why did that knowledge take so long in coming?
That I can’t help you with; it was in our textbooks when I was a child. The whole reason for the importation of Africans was that the Indians were too susceptible to European diseases and died too quickly under the harsh conditions of slavery, particularly in the canefields and mines of the Caribbean and South America. Also, the Catholic Church was more interested in Christianizing the Indians than enslaving them, and only tolerated slavery as a means to that end. Both the French and the Spanish were obliged to misrepresent the nature of their slavery programs to the Church in some colonies to avoid Papal censure. The modern notion of race was invented around this time to justify slavery. Previously, once you converted the natives, you were obliged to free them. This is in large part why the pagan Slavs of eastern Europe converted — it put an end to slave raids by the west.
Old textbooks, and I mean old, to my recollection, never touched on the subject of Indian slavery. Or possibly I was not paying attention. I think that it is likely that we, as a nation, only began facing up to our shabby human rights history only after the 1960s.
Thanks for your elaborate response otherwise.
but you don’t think that recognizing genocide has foreign policy implications for humanitarian interventions in the future? If this were in place in 1993, would it have been easier to intervene in Rwanda?
I’m not one who would have wanted to intervene in Rwanda. At least, not unless it was paid for by the international community and they committed to keeping the peace after our rapid mobilization capabilities were taken advantage of. Fine…we’re the only ones that can get there fast and deploy. I don’t want to pay anything for it (other than our fair share, minus some compensation for our sacrifice) and I want our troops out completely in short order.
And I don’t want to get asked over and over again to intervene everywhere there is a civil war, or narcotics farming, or a tsunami, or an earthquake, or someone might be making a chemical weapon.
This idea that it is to our benefit to be the ambulance and the police for the world is insane. And it has not been generally beneficial the world, either.
Have you seen the national debt? Compare the US to Norway for how well we live, how long we live, and how much we spend on defense. I’m tired of it.
I am not indifferent to human suffering but it is not our job to do this alone, pay for it in lives and treasure, and then have people literally dying to kill us for it. It has to be part of a different paradigm, where we play a much less of a role.
Maybe it’s a brilliant tactical maneuver meant to hasten a US departure from Iraq and/or prevent an attack on Iran by pissing off Turkey such that they won’t be inclined to let the US use bases, roads and/or airspace.
Did you just suggest that Congress made a brilliant tactical maneuver? 😉
I know, right? But one can dream.