Hartford Courant
Oct 14 2007

Whom Does It Help To Call It Genocide?

By NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
October 14, 2007

Thank God! We have been waiting almost 100 years for the U.S. House
of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to do it and at long
last they did – those statesmen and stateswomen! They voted to
declare the 1915 massacres of Armenians by the Turks an official
genocide.

Now, don’t you feel better? Isn’t the world a better place for this
courageous act on the part of our legislators? Aren’t we all freer?
Stronger? Safer? More long-lived? Healthier? Richer? Wiser and better
sexually adjusted?

What’s next? A resolution condemning Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt,
and the slaughter visited on the Egyptians at the Battle of the
Pyramids? And how about a little legislative attention for the Romans
killed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C. Better look
into that one, too, guys.

Do you think that the House Foreign Affairs Committee might, after it
has righted any number of ancient wrongs, look into what in the world
is going on right now, under their own noses? This very committee has
a direct responsibility for the death of 600,000 Iraqis and the
flight of some 2 million more from their homes. Does that bear a
little looking into?

While they are putting the genocide label on others, would the
gentlemen and gentleladies of the committee consider putting some
sort of label on themselves?

The horrific murders of the Armenians occurred almost a century ago.
However, the murders in Iraq are going on now, fellas. Does that fact
suggest that you might have more urgent business than chewing over
crimes of yesteryear?

The answer is no, thanks to the Armenian lobby. Many persons of
Armenian extraction live in vote-rich California, which explains why
these politicians have flung themselves into the study of bygone
events. As usual, the congressional panderers stalk the halls of the
Capitol.

No countervailing Turkish lobby exists in California, but in Turkey,
people are riled up over their being called names by disreputable
American politicians. So we are faced with two dangers to
counterbalance each other.

Danger No.1 is what will happen if Congress does not pass a
resolution calling the events of 1915 genocide. That might result in
a couple members of the California congressional delegation losing
their jobs a year from November. Danger No.2 is what happens if they
go ahead with their genocide resolution. The Turks could kick the
United States out of our Air Force Base at Incirlik, which the
military needs to carry on its shenanigans in Iraq. The Turks could
do quite a few other things that we would not like to see them do.
But it seems to Congress that it is better to cave in to another
pressure group.

Committee chairman Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California, hit it on
the head when he said, "We have to weigh the desire to express our
solidarity with the Armenian people … against the risk that it
could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States
armed services to pay an even heavier price."

So Lantos and the rest voted for the resolution and for our young
people in uniform paying "an even heavier price."

And those Congress people on Capitol Hill can’t understand why their
poll ratings are even lower than George W. Bush’s.

Nicholas von Hoffman is a columnist for the New York Observer. This
article was distributed by Agence Global, an op-ed service.

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