BUSH IS RIGHT ON TURKISH ISSUE

Barre Montpelier Times Argus, VT
?AID=/20071015/OPINION01/710150307/1021/OPINION01
Oct 15 2007

America’s critics – and many of our friends, too – have long
accused the Bush administration of unfettered arrogance and
self-righteousness. Now a number of Democrats of Capitol Hill have
shown that these traits aren’t confined to Republicans.

Twenty-seven members of the House foreign affairs committee voted
last week to condemn Turkey for its role in a horror that occurred
more than 90 years ago. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged Sunday to
bring the matter to a full vote in the House.

Relations between Washington and a key ally, not only in the war in
Iraq and but in the war against terrorism in general, have suddenly
and needlessly turned sour.

Perhaps this folly could have been averted had President Bush not
squandered his influence on Capitol Hill through his own ineptitude,
but headstrong Democrats made it clear they weren’t about to heed
the warnings from a discredited White House or even from the state
department.

Seven years ago, a similar resolution passed the same House committee
but President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, had sufficient clout to
persuade the Republican leader, Dennis Hastert, to keep the measure
from going to the full House. Those were the good old days, when a
president’s foreign policy priorities carried some weight with our
elected representatives in Congress. Turkey has warned that if the
full House approves the resolution, it will reconsider its support for
the American war effort. Importantly, that support includes permission
to ship essential supplies through Turkey and northern Iraq.

Turkey’s military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, said Sunday that if
the full House passes the resolution "our military relations with the
United States can never be the same," according to a Reuters report.

"The U.S. shot its own foot," he also said.

And so, an act of untimely self-righteousness by Congressional
Democrats means Bush must somehow to mollify the Turks, who are already
itching to fight Kurdish rebels carrying out incursions from northern
Iraq. If Turkish troops cross into Iraq to pursue these rebels,
efforts to bring peace to that region would be further crippled.

Historians generally agree that the Ottoman Empire – from which Turkey
later emerged – did indeed slaughter Armenians on a scale that meets
the definition of genocide. It was a crime against civilization,
and the Turkish people deserve scorn for refusing to acknowledge
their nation’s guilt.

Turks should have long ago admitted this shameful chapter in their
history, and their failure to do so – indeed, their insistence, year
after year, that the genocide never happened – remains a black mark
against a country eager for respect and for acceptance by the western
community of nations.

"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people
that began in 1915," Bush said in response to the committee’s 27-21
vote. "This resolution is not the right response to these historic
mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations
with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

The president is right. While there is every reason to be appalled by
what happened to the Armenians, for the House of Representatives to
vote, almost a century later, to deplore this particular massacre may
burnish the self-image of the politicians but it needlessly complicates
the task of maintaining positive diplomatic relations with a nation
that, for its own reasons, is extremely sensitive to such criticism.

Would we like it if Turkey censured the United States for its treatment
of blacks and Native Americans?