UNFIT FOR COMMAND
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The Conservative Voice, NC
.html
Oct 16 2007
Observing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Democratic House imperil a
U.S.-Turkish alliance of 60 years — by formally charging Turkey with
genocide in a 1915 massacre of the Armenians — the question comes
to mind:
Does this generation have the maturity to lead America?
About the horrors visited on Armenians in 1915, that year of Turkish
triumph over the Royal Navy in the Dardanelles, which led to the
ouster of First Lord Winston Churchill, and of victory over the
British-French-ANZAC invasion force on Gallipoli, there is no doubt.
Between 1915 and 1923, as modern Turkey was being torn out of the
womb of a dying Ottoman Empire, a million or more Armenians died in
massacres and a forced exodus. It was one of the monstrous crimes
and terrible tragedies of a 20th century that abounded in both.
That Armenian-Americans wish to have their holocaust recognized is
understandable. But that Democrats could not put off that request —
for Congress to officially charge Turkey with genocide, 90 years ago —
is not.
For what was the necessity for the House to take this sensitive moment
in U.S.-Turkish relations to rub our allies’ noses in century-old
sins by equating their fathers with Hitler and Himmler?
What was their motive?
Answer: House Democrats are pandering to an Armenian lobby that has
long sought to have the United States formally declare that what
Turks did to them is exactly what Nazis did to the Jews. The genocide
resolution now goes to the floor, where Pelosi promises swift passage.
One trusts Democrats will be rewarded, for the damage they have done
to the national interest is great.
In Turkey, America has always been regarded more warmly than the
other Western democracies. We never declared war on Turkey in 1917.
We were not party to the secret Sykes-Picot deal that carved up the
Ottoman Empire. Though Woodrow Wilson agreed in Paris to accept a
U.S. trusteeship of Constantinople, which would have put us on a
collision course with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s nation, the Senate
rejected it.
When, after World War II, Stalin pressed down on Turkey, the Turks
were among the first beneficiaries of Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine
aid. Turks reciprocated by sending their sons to fight beside Americans
in Korea. They were then brought into NATO.
The Turks accepted U.S. intermediate-range ballistic missiles targeted
on the Soviet Union, then accepted their removal as part of JFK’s
secret deal with Nikita Khrushchev to end the Cuban missile crisis.
No nation has been a better friend or more reliable ally. Since
the first days of the Cold War, Turkey hosted U.S. bases. And few
nations are more crucial than this land bridge between Islam and the
West, between the Middle East and Europe. Turkey is a crossroads of
the world.
But the relationship has deteriorated.
The Turks opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, arguing, rightly it turns
out, that Saddam was no threat to the region. The Turks refused to
allow us to use their territory for a northern front in the invasion
of Iraq. Yet, today, Turkey is indispensable to Gen.
Petraeus. Turkish drivers deliver munitions and supplies overland to
Iraq. Turkish bases, like Incirlik, are used by the U.S. Air Force
to support American troops in Iraq.
Ankara’s reward: to have Congress vote to condemn Turkey’s founding
fathers as genocidal murderers.
Understandably, Turks are coming to see the alliance as a one-way
street and themselves as forgotten friends. For we have failed to
convince the Kurds we shelter in northern Iraq to rein in their
terrorist cousins, who are using Iraqi territory as a privileged
sanctuary from which to attack the Turkish army. Two dozen Turkish
soldiers have been murdered in two separate attacks in recent weeks
by the PKK.
When Pancho Villa raided Columbus, N.M., in 1916, and killed dozens of
Americans, Wilson sent Gen. Pershing and an army of 12,000 into Mexico
to run him down. Turks have the same right of hot pursuit, and they
feel the same rage. For the Leninists of the PKK were responsible for
a 15-year war in which some 37,000 Turks and Kurds died before 1999,
when a truce was declared.
By reigniting a war of terror in Turkey and using bases in Iraq from
which to attack, the PKK appears to be provoking a Turkish invasion
of Iraq, which could deal a mortal blow to the U.S.-Turkish alliance
and would be a disaster for U.S. policy in Iraq. Meanwhile, Iranian
Kurds of a related terror group, PEJAK, have been conducting attacks
inside Iran. Iran, like Turkey, has been responding with artillery
fire into Iraq.
The United States needs to sit down with our Kurdish friends and
explain that in return for U.S. protection, they are to rein in the
PKK and PEJAK before they drag us into a wider war.
As for Ms. Pelosi & Co., they seem determined to prove the point
that, no matter the failures of Bush & Co., the Democrats are unfit
for command.
To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page at