CONGRESS AIMS TO BUILD BRIDGE BY BURNING ANOTHER

ASU The Appalachian Online, NC
/
Oct 23 2007

The decision to vote on the resolution that describes the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians as genocide has polarized the
United States Congress.

To the naked eye the decision may appear easy, but you have to
empathize with both sides of the argument before you jump to
conclusions.

On the surface, any human being with half of a heart wouldn’t
hesitate to declare the gruesome slayings of an ungodly amount of
people as genocide.

Only paralleled by the Holocaust, the Armenian killings by the Ottoman
Empire in World War I are quite possibly one of the most disturbing
and grotesque happenings in human history.

The Armenian National Committee of America estimates that over 1.5
million Armenians perished by the hands of the Young Turks of the
Ottoman Empire.

It seems like a no-brainer. It may be a little late, but hey, any
condemnation of genocide is quite warranted, right?

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.

See, it’s been close to 100 years since the genocide took place.

The Ottoman Empire crumbled after World War I and became modern-day
Turkey.

To this day, Turkey refuses to acknowledge the acts as genocide,
which is utterly ridiculous and embarrassing to that nation.

However, in these tumultuous times of war in the Middle East,
Turkey happens to be one of our only allies in the region. We have
bases and troops in Turkey that are key in stabilizing the Kurds in
Northern Iraq.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

Who gives a damn if we offend Turkey? We shouldn’t be there in the
first place!

Well you may very well be right about those notions, but if condemning
a century-old act by a nation that doesn’t exist anymore will only
lead to more American troops getting killed for naught, then we might
want to rethink our timing.

I admire Nancy Pelosi for trying to acknowledge one of the most fatal
blunders and inexcusable acts of aggression in the world’s history.

But if doing so will put more troops in harm’s way if Turkey does not
cooperate with U.S. troops, then it might be worth it to wait for a
time that wouldn’t be so detrimental to our troops.

And while you’re at it, why doesn’t Congress speak out on other
treacheries committed in history?

Let’s go way back in time and denounce some lingering faults that
have never been addressed.

What about that little thing the United States participated in called
slavery? Maybe there isn’t a lobby as powerful as the Armenian one
that can persuade Congress to call for reparations.

What about Japanese internment camps or banana republics or sweatshops
that we still fund unabashedly?

My point is that there are many things that the U.S. Congress can
look back upon and denounce, so why this one now?

If Congress is concerned with bringing home the troops safely, then
do it.

However, the fact that the Turkish President Abdullah Gul denounced
the American vote as "unacceptable" and referred to the resolution
as "petty games of domestic politics" makes it very difficult to
side with a country that labels the genocide as a "civil strife"
and refuses to acknowledge their grandfathers’ wrongdoings.

But the Turkish president does bring up an interesting point.

Is this really a political move?

The Armenian lobby has been trying to get this resolution passed for
decades, and now, when we are in an oversees struggle with a NATO
ally, is the time when we decide to come around and speak out about
the atrocities?

I shudder to think that Congress is playing political chess with the
lives of our soldiers in order to dissolve the war in Iraq.

I hope the Armenian people are satisfied with the U.S. denunciation
and I hope Turkey admits to what their ancestors did.

I also hope Congress continues to point out other mishaps in history,
including our own, and that their hasty decision to condemn the
Ottoman Empire doesn’t lead to more American casualties in the region.