THE STARVING ARMENIANS

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
April 7, 2010 Wednesday

They were the first victims of one genocide among so many in the 20th
Century, but it’s not diplomatic to say so. The Turkish government
might be offended. So the Obama administration pulled out the usual
stops the other day, urging the House Foreign Affairs Committee to
shelve a resolution taking note of the Armenian massacres during the
First World War.

Yes, Barack Obama had promised to recognize the Armenian genocide when
he was running for president, but he’s president now. He’s in power,
and with great power come great responsibilities, prominent among
them not speaking truth. Truth can be impolitic.

The secretary of state dutifully echoed her boss. "Both President
Obama and I have made clear, both last year and again this year," said
Hillary Clinton, "that we do not believe any action by the Congress
is appropriate, and we oppose it." What’s fealty to history compared
to the demands of Realpolitik?

In the end, the House committee did decide to call genocide genocide.

By one vote. The final tally was Truth 23, Silence in the Face of
Evil, 22.

The vote may say less about what happened in Turkey a century ago than
about what has happened to the American spirit since. For there was
a time when America did not hesitate to cry bloody murder. ("500,000
Armenians said to have perished/ Washington asked to stop slaughter of
Christians by Turks and Kurds."-New York Times, September 24, 1915.)
It was a time when the mass deportation and annihilation of a whole
people could still shock the world, and move even diplomats to
protest. Our secretary of state at the time not only had convictions
but dared expressed them. William Jennings Bryan protested the
massacres "as a matter of humanity." How undiplomatic.

The American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, did what he could
to publicize the genocide even before there was such a word for a
crime so immense. He was determined that the whole world would know
what was happening in Turkey. To quote one of his public appeals:
"More than 2 million persons were deported. The system was about
the same everywhere. The Armenians, men, women, and children, would
be assembled in the marketplace. Then the able-bodied men would be
marched off and killed by being shot or clubbed in cold blood at some
spot which did not necessitate the trouble of burial. . . . As a last
step, those who remained, mothers, grandmothers, children were driven
forth on their death pilgrimages across the desert of Aleppo, with
no food, no water, no shelter, to be robbed and beaten at every halt."

Ambassador Morgenthau’s conclusion: "If America is going to condone
these offenses . . . she is party to the crime." Teddy Roosevelt,
who was always ready for a fight, was long out of the White House by
then, but when the massacres came to light, he demanded a declaration
of war against Turkey.

The whole country rang with protests. The massacres even entered the
American vernacular. When children wouldn’t eat their vegetables,
they might be told to remember "the starving Armenians." Old-timers
may remember the phrase; it remains in the language even if the
history behind it has been forgotten.

Now, if the pundits and analysts note this congressional resolution
at all, they seem more interested in the politics of it than the
historical truth it expresses. Which is how politics loses its moral
edge and becomes only a power game.

The Turks responded to the passage of the resolution in committee
by recalling their ambassador for "consultations"-a show of Ankara’s
displeasure.

For official purposes, the Turkish government still claims the
Armenians weren’t victims of any organized massacre in the years
1915-1918. It seems they just disappeared one day by the hundreds
of thousands. Or they met with a series of unfortunate accidents in
wartime. Or for their own reasons they chose to decamp for the deserts
of Syria. Or they were wiped out in a series of spontaneous riots
that the beleaguered authorities could do nothing to prevent. Or,
to use a phrase from another genocide, they were resettled in the East.

In short, when a single truth must be avoided, falsehoods multiply.

And diplomats impose a discreet silence. Why offend?

Over time the Armenian massacres faded from the world’s memory, but
some statesmen remembered, and drew the inevitable conclusion: that the
world would scarcely notice a little genocide among friends. To quote
one of them speaking to a group of his confidants: "It’s a matter of
indifference to me what a weak Western European civilization will say
about me. I have issued the command-and I’ll have anybody who utters
but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad-that our war
aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical
destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head
formations in readiness-for the present only in the East-with orders
to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion men,
women, and children. . . . Only thus shall we gain the living space
we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the
Armenians?" -A. Hitler

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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor
of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.