The Turks committed genocide against the Armenians between 1915-1917. You can look it up. Yet, the Turks deny it. Strangely, Congress seems obsessed with two things. They’re obsessed with introducing resolutions to recognize that the genocide occurred and they’re obsessed with defeating those same resolutions so as not to offend the Turks. The whole charade repeats itself endlessly and it is one of the sadder spectacles produced by our government. First of all, it is totally unnecessary for Congress to pass a resolution to confirm historical reality. America had nothing to do with the genocide. In fact, on April 6, 1917, we entered World War One on the other side of the conflict from the Turks. But if it is unnecessary to confirm the genocide, it is totally gratuitous to deny it.
The solution is to stop introducing these stupid resolutions. Shall we have a congressional resolution to confirm that the pyramids are in Egypt?
A lot of Congressional resolutions are kind of stupid, things like Representative X getting it passed wherein Congress “resolves” to congratulate local baseball team Y for winning some championship and the like.
And I will definitely stipulate that a simple resolution saying anything is relatively useless and/or without much significance.
But the issue of the Armenian genocide/holocaust has powerful ramifications. In the American domestic, political side you’ve got a whole lot of Armenian and American-Armenians (esp in California) wanting a little recognition for their presence.
On the other side, (domestically) you’ve got the warmongers who curry favor with Turkey for a whole host of reasons, and Turkey would go absolutely apeshit if such a resolution (however toothless) was passed.
So regardless of the ACTUAL significance of a resolution, the fact that it would have a huge political impact makes it de facto much more significant than just a few words on paper.
You said it is if it is unnecessary to confirm the genocide, it is totally gratuitous to deny it. Think just for a minute if that was how people went about addressing the WW2 Holocaust against the Jews by Hitler and the Axis powers.
Clearly a lot of people (and politicians) spend a great deal of time “confirming” the genocide, anywhere from movies to AIPAC to museums, etc.
Likewise there is a tremendous amount of effort spend in jailing, firing, ostracizing and shunning people who deny or question it.
Clearly the events of WW2 with regards to the Jews has tremendous importance on today’s American politics, both foreign policy and domestic. It’s literally unthinkable to trivialize this.
So why is it ok to trivialize “only” 1.5 million dead Armenians? Why is our bestest Muslim NATO ally still so upset about this that it is a jailable offense to CONFIRM this historical fact?
If you’re not of German heritage OR of Jewish heritage or of recent European or Middle Eastern heritage, yeah the WW2 Holocaust might not mean that much to you personally. The same can be said if you’re not of Armenian or Turkish heritage.
But regardless of such, these things do matter to a whole lot of people. And Congressional resolutions, regardless of how “toothless” they are, are important to people. All you have to do is imagine a Congressional resolution saying “the Jewish Holocaust never happened” and you’ll get the idea.
Not to mention the Armenian holocaust led to a whole lot of other things, such as the later gigantic displacement of Greek and Turkish people in the Mediterranean basin, all the problems with Bulgarians, the continuing repression of the Kurds, etc, etc. not to mention Nagorno-Karabakh. The list is nearly endless and all of these things have VITAL, STRATEGIC importance today!
Pax
what if some idiot decided to offer a resolution every year that Congress recognize that the destruction of European Jewry was a ‘first-degree’ genocide, to distinguish it from more ad-hoc genocides in Sudan and Cambodia? And what if Congress kept refusing to pass such a resolution out of sensitivity to our Muslim and Buddhist allies?
I don’t dispute that people find these definitions to be important. But they have no importance as congressional resolutions. Should Japan recognize what they did to the Chinese, Koreans, and other subjects of their empire? Yes. Should we pass resolutions about it in our Congress? No.
It’s not our dispute.
Except that there’s such a thing as ethnic politics in this country. And actually, ethnic politics is a lot more benign here than in many other oountries. Unfortunately, such symbolic political gestures take on added importance in that, for so many ethnic Americans, they are a major or even THE major affirmations of their ethnicity. Think about it. How much of American politics consists of symbolic gestures, or effectively little more than that, to various ethnic and other identity constituencies? — when the real object of the exercise is — if anything more than a sop to this or that group — the attainment of some unrelated present-day foreign-policy objective.
Quite frankly 99% of US foreign policy is based around shit that is NOT our dispute 😉
Pax
What is at issue is our right to use our legislative process to condemn another nation’s past when there is so much else to do. How much better to re-envigorize the United Nations’ efforts at human rights and begin to recommit ourselves to never having such things happen again?
Maybe Congress should just buy a hundred thousand copies of “The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law and Genocide in the Twentieth Century” by Christopher Simpson, and make sure a copy is in every library.
Of course, one of the problems with the Armenian genocide is that the Dulles brothers, the New York Times and oil are all involved in the story. Read it and weep.
I find it the height of silliness that they continue to do this. I mean, I get the politics of it, but why all the ceremony? Don’t they invite an Armenian ambassador and a Turkish one when they do this vote?
Guess we won’t have to worry about anyone moving to recognize the holocaust in Gaza.
….. at least until we quit FUNDING it.
pass a resolution saying we were incompetent and stupid in allowing election fraud in 2000, how do we react?
And when Obama goes to Turkey and he’s met with contempt by those who think we are hypocrites for condeming a century-old crime in their country and ignoring months-old crimes in ours, or ongoing genocide in Darfur, how does he answer?
The issues are a site more complex, ranging from balancing necessary relationships with Kurds, Turks, Israelis, Armenians, Azeris, etc.
You can see the interest in drawing a line as far as how ethnic groups with armies treat each other, so the bills come out. You can also understand why American Armenian groups would spend their money trying to get the resolution past. The idea that the genocide is ‘historical fact’ to most of the world now may be true, but that is a recent development.
“It happened. why dwell?” Doesn’t go far in preventing the next ethnic cleansing or genocide. In practice, that idea is callous enough to invite responsibility for the next genocide. There is but one way to slow the urge to wipe your enemies out permanently: to keep the horror actively alive and in peoples faces.
You can also see how shedding light on the Turkish genocide might eventually reflect poorly on later US policies like our oil-driven activities (fail!) the during the Nagorno-Karabakh War, which leads one directly to some particularly nasty truths about US activities abroad, an ice berg who’s tip has popped up in the Sibel Edmonds case, following Secord and Best around, etc.
The ‘annual’ self-abuse ritual that results is not to be stopped by dismissing the need to address genocide, but rather by setting our own house in order first.
U.S. persons of Armenian descent vote. Ask Ms Pelosi. From the Congress’s point of view nothing could be more logical than a rejected resolution about the Armenain genocide. Then the Armenians love the U.S. and the Turks think the U.S. is still one of their bestest friends.
I think Congress should condemn the Roman genocide of the Carthaginians. Oh, wait, we don’t have any Carthaginians voting in the USA.
I’m not trivializing the Armenian tragedy, but Congress has MUCH more to do than point fingers over a hundred year old tragedy. If they must, then let them condemn US genocide of Native Peoples before throwing rocks at others.