New York Post, NY
Oct 14 2007
PLAYING POLITICS WITH GENOCIDE
HOW THE DEMOCRATS ARE USING THE ARMENIANS TO GET THEIR WAY IN IRAQ
By RALPH PETERS
October 14, 2007 — In the midst of the First World War, the Young
Turks who had taken over the Ottoman Empire committed genocide
against their Armenian subjects. At least a million Armenians were
murdered – with nauseating cruelty – or died of abuse, heat, hunger
and thirst.
The only reason any survived was that the Turks lacked the
administrative skills and technologies to kill everyone. Not every
captive fit into the burning churches. On the death marches across
Anatolia into the Syrian desert, guards ran out of bullets. And even
sadists grew weary of bayoneting children and clubbing old men to
death.
Women were raped by the tens of thousands. Many were raped
repeatedly. Then they were killed. Or enslaved. Or left to die of
exposure by the roadside.
Ancient communities were annihilated. A magnificent culture – the
remnants of the world’s first Christian kingdom – drowned in blood.
Only Turks question this history. The eyewitness accounts are
extensive – not only from Armenian survivors, but from American and
German consuls and missionaries. The documentation is readily
available (texts crowd one of my bookshelves).
Hitler cited the Armenian Genocide as an inspiration for the
Holocaust – the lesson he drew was that the Turks got away with it.
The world never intervened. Apologists for the Allies blamed the war.
The truth is that the eyewitnesses went ignored: Armenian lives had
less value then than do those of Darfur refugees today.
Last Wednesday, the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs
Committee passed a resolution formally declaring the Armenian tragedy
what it was: genocide. Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to bring the
resolution to a vote on the floor, after which it would go to the
Senate.
We need to stop it. It’s a travesty and a betrayal. Of
Armenian-Americans. And of our troops.
Make no mistake: I’m on the Armenian side in the court of history.
When the same resolution came up in years past, I supported it. The
Armenian survivors – their descendents, at this point – deserve
justice.
And I have no sympathy with the Turks. The Turks are jerks. After the
United States supported them unswervingly for more than a
half-century, they stiffed us the single time we needed help – when
we asked to move an Army division through Turkey on the eve of
Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And the Ankara government has led an internal campaign of
anti-Americanism far more lurid and vicious than the old Soviet
bloc’s anti-Western propaganda. It’s not just Turkey’s Islamists, but
its secular nationalists, too. The anti-American hatred spewing from
the Turkish media is uglier than Barbra Streisand at four in the
morning.
The Turks tormented their Kurdish minority for decades – and express
outrage when Kurds respond. Now they’re threatening to invade
northern Iraq, while whining that honor-killings, pervasive
corruption and anti-Western venom shouldn’t deny them membership in
the EU.
Despite all that, we’ve got to kill this resolution. It’s not the
wording – but the timing.
Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet
it’s always been defeated – in 2000, because of pressure from the
Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and
Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in
southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and
to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.
That’s what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn’t about
justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It’s a stunningly devious
attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop
withdrawals.
The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won’t
be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and
strike missions would disappear.
The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss
of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops.
Severely. And we’d be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable
lifeline running from Kuwait.
It’s a brilliant ploy – the Dems get to stab our troops in the back,
but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they’re responding
to their Armenian-American constituents – while actually moving to
placate MoveOn.org.
For the Democrats in Congress, it looks like a cost-free strategy.
For our troops? When did the Dems give a damn about our troops? This
resolution isn’t a stand in favor of historical justice. It’s an
end-run that ducks behind the bench. It’s one of the most cynical
betrayals in our legislative history – of our troops, of
Armenian-Americans, of the Kurds under threat from the Turkish
military and of the people of Iraq.
We can’t let Pelosi & Co. get away with this one. We need to call the
Dems on it and make it clear that we, the people, know what they’re
trying to do.
Every human being with a drop of Armenian blood deserves justice.
This isn’t it.
`Ralph Peters’ latest book is `Wars of Blood and Faith."
view photoes of "Scenes of horror from the Armenian genocide" at
n/opedcolumnists/playing_politics_with_genocide.ht m?page=0