The Emory Wheel
Oct 19 2007

The Politics of Genocide

By Benjamin Van der Horst
Posted: 10/19/2007

It’s been a key tenant of political thought in the West since the
Holocaust:
If a country like the United States recognizes something as genocide –
– – acknowledges an act as the deliberate destruction of a group of
people – then we have a moral obligation to intervene and stop the
killing.
In the past few weeks, talk of genocide has been prominent in the
United States, and especially at Emory. On Tuesday, Paul Rusesabagina,
the man whose story formed the basis for the movie Hotel Rwanda, spoke
at Emory about the genocide he lived through in Rwanda in 1994. In
just three months, more than one million of Rusesabagina’s fellow
Rwandans were killed.
The United States and the rest of the West sat that atriocity out on
the sidelines, even though we knew exactly what was
happening. President Bill Clinton has said that not intervening in the
Rwandan genocide was one of the worst decisions of his presidency.
Genocide has been a hot topic nationally because of a resolution in
the United States House of Representatives that would officially
recognize the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the
First World War as a genocide. Even though support for the bill has
waned in the last couple of days, last week it still managed to pass
the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This infuriated Turkey, which
strongly disputes the claims of genocide, to the point where they
recalled their American Ambassador to Ankara.
This resolution is pointless. Shame on Nancy Pelosi and the rest of
the Democratic leadership for continuing to push a bill that could
seriously impair American efforts in the Middle East.
For the first time in what seems like years, President Bush is on the
right side of an issue, encouraging Congress to vote down the
resolution.
Turkey is one of our strongest allies in the Middle East and this
resolution will harm vital American-Turkish ties to allow the
Democrats to pander to a small minority – Armenian-Americans – that
conveniently makes up a good portion of Pelosi’s district. Much of the
logistical support helping our troops in Iraq passes through or above
Turkey and if we were to lose the ability to use Turkey in the war in
Iraq, our soldiers could be put at risk.
Pelosi claims that Turkey’s status as an ally has protected them for
too long, and that the United States must call what happened a
genocide. This the Democrats’ attempt to regain the moral high ground:
Calling something that happened 90 years ago a genocide?
If Pelosi and the leaders on Capitol Hill want to actually do
something productive about genocide, I suggest they stop pandering and
do something to stop genocide today. There is still a genocide going
on in Darfur. What is Nancy Pelosi doing to stop it? She’s attempting
to win political points by focusing on a worthless resolution about
genocide that would hurt our efforts in Iraq and alienate one of our
few remaining Middle East allies.
Bravo, Madam Speaker. You’ve managed to demonstrate another way in
which the Democrats have squabbled the trust voters placed in them
last November.
Benjamin Van der Horst is a College junior from Cincinnati. He is
executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica
and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.