GENOCIDE CONFLICTS WITH US INTERESTS
Peter Schurmann
New California Media, CA
Oct 12 2007
The Bush administration’s response to the passing by congress of a
resolution defining the 1915 massacre of over one million Armenians as
‘genocide’ is reminiscent of the comments made recently by Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in regards to the genocide of six
million jews at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Reuters reports that administration officials urged congress not
to pass the resolution, warning that it threatens to undermine
US-Turkey relations, critical to American interests in the region
(and particulalry in Iraq, where another ethnic conflict has erupted
despite America’s denial). And yet America wastes little time in
attacking Ahmadinejad for denying the Nazi holocaust during WWII.
Giving justice to the families of Armenian victims of what noted
journalist Robert Fisk calls the "first holocaust" is a step towards
redeeming the bloody and unresolved history of the Twentieth century,
a century that laid the foundations for our own turbulent era.
The connections in fact go much deeper. In "The Great War for
Civilization," Fisk writes of the close ties between Nazi military
leadres and Ottoman generals then in the process of working out
what they referred to as the "Armenian question." Tactics included
the organized rape and slaughter of women and children, starvation,
and the carrying off of would be victims via train, loved ones whose
whereabouts to this day are unknown.
Acknowledging the killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces during WWI
as genocide sends a clear message that perpetrators of such acts will
be condemned. Failure to do so extenuates past injustices and opens
the door to similar crimes today – such as in Darfur.
It is a double-standard that further implicates America’s government as
one that , while preaching the value of human rights to others, fails
to live up to these standards when they conflict with US interests.
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