RIGHT TIME, WRONG GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
By Garin K. Hovannisian

Los Angeles Times, CA
n/la-oe-hovannisian25oct25,1,7957860.story?coll=la -news-comment
Oct 25 2007

The grandstanding in Congress cheapens the Armenian genocide, but the
resolution exposes enmity with Turkey that the president cannot ignore.

Old promises never die; they just fade away. So it is with the House’s
Armenian genocide resolution, the delicate dream of an underdog
people who have, since their slaughter and dispossession in 1915,
struggled to bring memory to power.

When the resolution cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee on
Oct. 10, I was in L.A. — the diaspora’s nerve center — and Armenian
schools and churches were rumbling in anticipation. All that remained
was for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her promise to give the resolution
a full House vote.

Then, suddenly, the Washington machinery growled. Turkey recalled
its ambassador to the U.S., while its lobbyists caught up with
members of Congress. The political media — from National Review
to the Nation — showcased a powerful set of hostilities toward
the resolution. And within a few days, at least a dozen co-sponsors
withdrew their support. "It’s a good resolution but a horrible time
to be considering it," said Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.).

A horrible time because Turkey is a "key strategic ally," or, to
exorcise the flattery, a crutch in America’s democratic balancing act
in the Near East. As it happens, Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey
serves as a transfer point for 70% of U.S. cargo headed for Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates cited "our heavy dependence on
the Turks" in his case against the resolution.

Many other reasonable worries have been splashed around — not all of
them by the usual troublemakers. The Armenian patriarch in Istanbul
opposed the resolution because he feared for the safety and standing
of Armenians in Turkey. Even I, the great-grandson of Armenian genocide
survivors, wrote against the resolution — not because I don’t believe
there was a genocide but because the resolution’s text and attendant
political grandstanding cheapened the reality of that tragedy.

The House has no business voting on the past. But the White House —
the conductor of U.S. foreign policy — has the obligation to face
history honestly. If the absorbed historic narrative is wrong or
politicized or incomplete — like our understanding of Baathism and
the Iraqi insurgency — foreign policy falters.

Unlikely though it sounds, the 92-year-old Armenian genocide is key
to U.S. foreign policy. It unlocks a closet of skeletons — but not
that of the Young Turks of 1915, stuffed with 1.5 million Armenian
skeletons. Instead, it opens the closet of today’s Turkey, which puts
its own Nobel laureate on trial for insulting "Turkishness"; which
has become, according to a 2007 Pew survey, the most anti-American
country in the world; where "Mein Kampf" hit the bestseller list in
2005; which denies the Armenian genocide committed by a past fascist
government probably because it retains some spiritual loyalty to it.

It is no irony, then, that in denouncing the Armenian genocide
resolution as a smear on its democratic name, Turkey is threatening
extremely undemocratic behavior. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
recently issued plan of "six reprisals" includes a shutdown of Incirlik
Air Base (a betrayal of the war on terrorism), a slow withdrawal from
NATO (a betrayal of the West) and a revamped partnership with Iran
(a betrayal of peace in the Near East). The flap over the resolution
has revealed that Turkey’s Western leanings are not based on steady
principles but on friendships of convenience.

Which is why I believe that the generally bad Armenian genocide
resolution came at precisely the right time for the United States. It
came at a time when our president could observe Turkey’s fascistic
convulsions and would be forced to choose between two historical
narratives. Would he choose the denialist fiction that would keep
afloat a rotting alliance and maybe his war? Or would he choose the
bloody truth?

At a news conference called just before the Foreign Affairs Committee
debate two weeks ago, President Bush brushed off the truth. He urged
Congress to stop the recognition, not because Congress trespassed
into Bush’s foreign policy jurisdiction but because it disrupted his
agenda. In turn, our ally responded Monday by announcing that it would
defy the pleas of the United States and cross Iraq’s northern border
to conduct military operations.

This latest breach of friendship — or, rather, revelation of enmity —
affords the president yet another chance to recalibrate the national
conscience and to reappear in the Rose Garden for two announcements:
the first, a request that Congress withdraw its resolution; the second,
a modest notice that the Armenian genocide of 1915 has not, in fact,
faded away, but quietly has been absorbed by America’s historical
narrative.

Garin K. Hovannisian is a graduate student at Columbia University’s
School of Journalism and blogs at LuckyFrown.com.