THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, APPEASING TURKEY, AND THE IRAQ WAR
By Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs Magazine, NY
Oct 18 2007

The news from Congress this week is grim. Democrats, who previously
endorsed a resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire for the Armenian
genocide during World War I, are now withdrawing their support.

Instead, they going along with the Bush administration’s position that
such an endorsement would undermine the US military position in Iraq,
where its Turkish NATO ally (which provides a key air and land bridge
for US forces) is currently threatening to take military action against
Kurdish guerilla forces operating from Iraqi territory in the Kurdish
regions of Turkey. Such an appeasement policy is being defended as
an unpleasant but necessary action to "protect our troops." Thus,
the resolution is apparently in serious danger of being tabled.

Along with this very bad news comes another story out of Washington
that should surprise no one: the Turkish government has provided
former Republican House Speaker-designate Robert Livingston, now
a Washington lobbyist, with $12 million dollars in recent years
for peddling his influence to block attempts by the US Congress to
join many other governments in issuing a formal condemnation of the
Armenian Genocide. Livingston was forced to resign from the House in
1999 after revelations of an extramarital affair as he prepared to
lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Since then he has set up
the Washington lobbying firm The Livingston Group. About 72% of the
group’s money comes from Turkey. According to the New York Times,
Livingston has "showered money on Democrats and Republicans alike."

Former Democratic House leader Richard Gephardt has also received
payments from Livingston via the Turks to defeat amendments on the
Armenian genocide.

Will the Turkish government, its well-paid lobbyists, and the Bush
administration succeed in blocking a formal condemnation by Congress
of the Turkish government’s carefully planned extermination of the
Armenian minority during World War I? If so, what will that mean,
politically, morally, and ethically for the United States?

First, there is absolutely no doubt that what occurred most
dramatically in 1915, and continued throughout the war, was a
deliberate policy of mass murder aimed at a religious and ethnic
minority, a policy later to be defined as genocide under international
law. A summary of historical events (see here and see PA radio episode
#41) is based on an extensive literature, most of which comes from
non-left scholarly sources, about these historical events. In the
language of US law, that the events which occurred constituted genocide
is far beyond any reasonable doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The Democrats and Republicans now withdrawing their support from
the House resolution condemning the genocide of the Armenian people
are all singing the same tune: the events happened nearly a century
ago and now is not the right time to deal with them. But the whole
purpose of history is not to forget, not to bury the past.

The US government dishonors itself and the American people by not
joining in with the more than 20 other nations who have formally
condemned the Armenian genocide and braved Turkish government
retaliation. Such an appeasement policy in exchange for continued
Turkish support for a disastrous occupation in IRAQ makes no sense.

Iraq, along with Syria and Palestine, were all colonies of the Ottoman
Turkish empire when World War I began, only to be taken over by the
British and French empires under bogus League of Nations "mandates"
as part of the spoils of war following Turkey’s and Germany’s defeat.

At present, the only serious "ally" the U.S. military has in Iraq is
the Kurdish minority in the North, which has been able to establish
a substantial amount of autonomy with US aid, and which suffered
persecution under the Saddam Hussein regime, just as Kurdish minorities
have suffered repression in both Iran and Turkey. It is obtuse,
even by Bush administration standards, to believe that appeasing
the Turkish government on the question of the Armenian genocide will
deter them from taking military action in Kurdish Iraq and creating
a serious crisis for the US-established Baghdad regime.

Appeasement almost inevitably backfires, in that it encourages
aggressors to take actions that the appeasers wanted to prevent.

More importantly, the Turkish government has not addressed the
grievances/never adequately addressed the grievances of the Kurdish
people living under Turkish control, and successive US governments
have done nothing to encourage them to do so.

Additional coverage: PA Radio: Rebuilding New Orleans and Bush’s
Politics of Genocide

Our troops are mortally endangered by the impossible situation which
the Bush administration has put them in Iraq. The only beneficiaries
of the war are the military industrial complex contractors.

Occupation contractors in Iraq, in collusion with corrupt Iraqi
and US officials, have literally had a license to steal hundreds
of billions of dollars, while paramilitary security contractors,
such as Blackwater, have had a license to kill. At the same time,
the regular troops on the ground, the "volunteer" national guard,
wrenched from civilian life, face expanded tours of duty and often
lack the necessary supplies to protect themselves. If they do manage
to return home, they see their VA benefits gutted.

By contrast, when Generals leave the service and members of Congress
are thrown out of office, they become multi-million dollar lobbyists
for defense contractors. In that sense, the commanders of US troops
in Iraq have a lot in common with lobbyist and former Rep. Robert
Livingston. Livingston has certainly emerged from his own scandals
with his personal finances enhanced. Today he is sitting pretty as
a multimillion-dollar lobbyist running interference for the Turkish
government, while a vote on the victims of the Armenian genocide is
about to be blocked by those whom Livingston has managed to buy off
with Turkish government funds.

Contact your congressional representative and the Democratic House
leadership to demand that the Armenian genocide resolution be
sustained. The resolution, if it is passed by Congress, would be a
statement to the people of the world that "human rights" is not just a
convenient and selective slogan for the US government. It might outrage
the present Turkish government. It might outrage the Al Qaeda forces,
who would probably call it an example of the US leading a Christian
"crusade" against Muslims, but it would be welcomed by the great
majority of the world’s people, including believing Christians,
Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., who don’t associate their
faiths with hatred and murder. They would see it as an affirmation
of the United Nations Charter, and a recognition of the fact that one
must understand and repudiate the crimes of the past in order not to
repeat them.

–Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress