ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION MOVING FORWARD
Rick Moran

American Thinker, WA
ian_genocide_resolution_m.html
Oct 15 2007

If you’re like many of us, you probably have mixed feelings about the
resolution passed the by the House Foreign Affairs Commitee denoting
the systematic killing of 1.5 million Christians, most of them of
Armenian descent, by Turkey in 1915 as genocide.

It is a classic case of Real Politik versus a moral imperative.

Turkey is absolutely insistent that any such acknowledgement of
genocide by the House will bring down swift retribution in the form
of reduced military cooperation with the United States – something
that could have very serious consequences for our efforts in Iraq.

On the other hand, history demands that we, as a civillized people,
bear witness to the crime against humanity perpetrated by the Turks
when, for a variety of reasons including economic and religious,
they set about the task of starving, massacring, and driving from
their homes millions of Armenians.

Does national security trump all other considerations in this case?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t think so:

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives insisted Sunday
that she would bring to the full chamber a resolution condemning the
killings of Armenians nearly a century ago as genocide, even as a
Turkish general warned that this could lastingly damage a military
relationship crucial to American forces in Iraq.

A House committee Wednesday passed a nonbinding resolution declaring
the killings, which began in 1915 in the waning days of the Ottoman
Empire, to be genocide, and the speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi,
said Sunday that "I’ve said if it passed the committee that we would
bring it to the floor."

But in Ankara, the Turkish military chief, General Yasar Buyukanit,
said that if the full House passed the resolution, "our military
relations with the United States can never be the same," Reuters
reported. "The U.S. shot its own foot," he told the Milliyet newspaper.

Buyukanit’s comment came two days after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan cautioned that bilateral relations with the United States,
a key partner in NATO, were endangered. To underscore the point,
Turkey has recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations.

The Turks have a wide range of options open to them as far as
retaliation is concerned, from mild to catastrophic. One interesting
note is that Turkey is one of America’s biggest arms customers which
includes spare parts. This opens the question of how much do the
Turks wish to damage their own interests when punishing the US for
the House vote.

Most experts agree that the Turks will almost certainly curtail
or even cut off our ability to resupply our forces in Iraq through
Turkey. This would be more than an inconvenience for our military who
would then be forced to bring even more supplies overland through
Kuwait – a long and dangerous journey that is already stretched to
the limit as far as logistics is concerned.

Turkey has also been a steadfast ally in the War on Terror. Reduced
cooperation in that theater would also hit hard our capability to
fight al-Qaeda.

The Turks continue to deny their "relocation" of Armenians and other
Christians during World War I was anything except an unforseeable
tragedy. This flies in the face of mountains of evidence including
the deliberate confiscation of Armenian property and the denial of
food deliveries to the refugees which caused mass starvation. There
are also numerous eye witness accounts of the massacre of more
tens of thousands both by Turkish troops and the so-called "Special
Organization" who were designated as "escorts" for the refugees after
they had been forcibly kicked out of their homes.

The Armenians were rounded up and marched out into the desert where
unspeakable atrocities were committed against them. Most simply died
of thirst or starvation. Others were brutally murdered by roving gangs
of criminals while members of the "Special Organization" stood by and
watched, sometimes actively participating in the killings themselves.

Those who survived the trek across the desert were brought to detention
camps. There were contemporary and historical reports that many of
the women and children were burned to death at these camps with others
being poisoned and even drowned.

The question of whether the death of 1.5 million Armenians was genocide
or not shouldn’t be the issue. It was. The question should be is the
House vote really necessary in light of the consequences that will
fall upon our military in Iraq?

Is there a right or wrong answer? We are at war and there is a
compelling argument to be made that we don’t have the "luxury" of
taking such a moral stand. The countervailing argument, that the
vote is long overdue as is recognition of the Turkish government’s
culpability in crimes against humanity also strikes a chord in our
conscience.

A cynic might point out that getting Turkey riled at us enough to cut
off access to our troops plays right into the hands of the anti-war
crowd. But I have enough faith left in most politicians that they
will vote based on the issues I outlined above rather than some end
run around our war policy.

Whether a vote of conscience or convenience, there will be a vote.

And how it turns out will say something important about this country.