Albany Times Union, NY
Oct 13 2007

Gun-shy on genocide

First published: Saturday, October 13, 2007

In a saner world, where political niceties don’t so readily give way
to the rituals of denial and retreat, the resolution by a House
committee condemning the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire during World War I for what it was — genocide, in
a word — would be too innocuous to command much in the way of
presidential attention. But there was President Bush, in ever typical
character, urging Congress to retreat from the truth.
The scene on the White House lawn Wednesday might best be described
as where the realpolitik championed by Henry Kissinger intersects
with the perversion of language, and ultimately veracity, spelled out
by George Orwell. To say the obvious about the massacre of Armenians
would be to offend the offenders, namely the Turks responsible for
such atrocities they deny to this day. And Turkey, of course, is one
of the few countries that still supports Mr. Bush in his stubborn
determination to stick it out in the Iraq war.

Shipping supplies through Turkey and into Iraq, critical as it is in
a nonetheless unwinnable war, becomes a diplomatic obstacle of its
own suddenly. Don’t say anything, even about the genocide of nearly a
century ago, if it’s to offend a modern-day ally. So what if Turkey
has now taken to dropping uneasy hints about attacking the Kurds? The
Bush administration still prefers accommodation and compliance.

The thinking at the White House isn’t much different under Mr. Bush
than it was under President Clinton, who stopped a similar House
resolution. Only the plain-speaking, and at times impolitic,
President Reagan was willing to describe what the Turks did to the
Armenians in the most appropriately blunt language.

Mr. Bush, by contrast, uses such insulting euphemisms as "the tragic
suffering of the Armenian people" as he pleads with the House not to
denounce what can’t be allowed to be forgotten, overlooked or
otherwise qualified or rationalized.

"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass
killings," he says, "and its passage would do great harm to our
relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

Rough translation: That was then, World I, and I have my own battle
to wage and legacy to salvage.

Imagine how the President, of all people, might react if someone
dared to suggest that a condemnation of the Sept. 11 attacks and the
terrorists responsible for them would do harm to a larger political
goal. Or how he’d respond to someone resisting a resolution honoring
the casualties of the Iraq war, on the grounds that the war must be
opposed on all fronts and in all ways.

It’s troubling that Mr. Bush appears to need to be reminded that the
United States is supposed to stand for something, namely some of the
grandest ideals and principles imaginable.

The deaths of 1.5 million people at the hands of a crumbling Ottoman
Empire to drive Armenians out of eastern Turkey were more than the
inevitable consequences the government in Istanbul and some
historians say they were. This was genocide. To oppose its
condemnation raises some very troubling questions about what this
government might do if such atrocities were to be repeated.

THE ISSUE: The White House is hesitant to condemn the mass killings
of Armenians.

THE STAKES: Such deference to Turkey puts the U.S. atop a slippery
slope.

oryID=629808&category=OPINION&newsdate=10/ 13/2007