A WILLFUL IGNORANCE: AMERICA MUST APPLY A UNIFORM STANDARD IN ITS REACTION TO GENOCIDE
By Matthew H. Ghazarian

Harvard Crimson
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Nov 26 2008
MA

Over the course of this year’s campaign, my grandparents–despite
their unfortunate racist inclinations–were particularly happy with
Barack Obama, then candidate and now President-elect. For them,
his appeal didn’t lie with his denunciation of the war in Iraq, his
plan for universal healthcare, or even his promise to reinvigorate
the economy. Rather, it was his stance on the Armenian Genocide,
of which my grandparents were victims, that won them over: "America
deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide
and responds forcefully to all genocides," Obama said last January,
"I intend to be that President."

Only time will tell whether or not Obama will stick to his
word. History, certainly, is not on his side. Despite its steady
criticism of human rights violations abroad, the United States
government has a disconcerting tendency to its power not as a means
of preventing the more despicable cases of crimes against humanity,
but as a strategic or political tool.

It’s no news that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has consistently
denied the occurrence of the Holocaust. The U.S. government wasted no
time in lambasting Ahmadinejad; in 2007 Congress passed a resolution
signaling their disapproval in no uncertain terms and condemning the
practice of Holocaust denial in general. Of course, there remains no
political risk in scolding Iran–America has had little strategic
interest or diplomatic ambition in the Islamic Republic since both
countries parted ways after the 1979 revolution.

It is no coincidence that, when these practical exigencies do exist,
the U.S. abandons its hard-line opposition to genocide in all its
forms. The government of Turkey, one of America’s closest allies in
the Middle East, not only vehemently denies the thoroughly documented
slaughters and deportations of 1.5 million Armenians during World War
I by Ottoman authorities, but has actually prosecuted its citizens
for insinuating any such events occurred.

Raphael Lemkin, the man who invented the word "genocide," did so in
part because he could not find a word to describe the horrors of
the Armenian episode. Yet in October 2007 Congress–the very same
legislature that inveighed against Holocaust denial when it was
easy–simply refused to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide
in a non-binding resolution. Upon hearing the news that the House
was planning a vote, Turkey threatened to cancel arms deals and
revoke their support for American air units operating in Iraq. The
U.S government blinked immediately.

Of course, some have pointed out that contemporary governments
shouldn’t meddle in history, that the confirmation and evaluation
of historical phenomena should be left to historians. However,
Congress has a strong precedent of politically recognizing historic
events. In recent years, it has passed resolutions commemorating
the anniversaries of the Holocaust, the founding of the Republican
Party, and even Napa Valley’s victory in a 1976 Paris wine-tasting
competition. No one objected to these commemorations.

This moral inconsistency on genocide is nothing new. In 1994,
having recently suffered losses in Somalia, the American political
establishment had no interest in starting other human rights
expeditions in Africa–so it dithered while the Rwandan genocide was
being perpetrated. At State Department press briefings, officials
refused to acknowledge that genocide was occurring, despite internal
documents clearly stating that it was. This spineless denial delayed
the placement of U.N. troops that could have averted the bloody 100
days during which Hutu militias slaughtered at least 800,000 Tutsi
citizens. Intervention was simply politically inconvenient.

In the contemporary case of Darfur, American politicians didn’t
hesitate to use the "g-word." With the war on terror spreading
throughout both Afghanistan and Iraq, anti-Arab sentiment was palpable
at the time, and again, the United States had little to lose in
labeling the actions of the Arab janjaweed as genocidal before the
U.N. could. Yet, again, intervention and even effectual advocacy has
been slow to come.

There is of course nothing wrong with the sober reverence paid to
the victims of the Holocaust by the powers-that-be in the United
States. The only problem is that that reverence is ultimately
undermined by general inconsistency in response to other clear
cases of genocide, all of which have wreaked unfathomable havoc
upon communities not unlike our own. If American politicians are to
continue to present this nation as the global defender of liberty
and human rights, it must begin to do so in every case.

Matthew H. Ghazarian ’10, a Crimson editorial comper, is a government
concentrator in Kirkland House.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress