BUSH SHOWS IGNORANCE OF HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL CODDLING OF TURKEY ON ARMENIA
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Oct 6 2007
In a deference to counterfactually based Turkish government
sensitivities, President Bush says the House of Representatives is
not the place to decide whether or not the murder of more than 1
million Armenians during World War I is a genocide:
Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said Friday that Bush
believes the Armenian episode ranks among the greatest tragedies of
the 20th century, but the determination whether "the events constitute
a genocide should be a matter for historical inquiry, not legislation."
Mr. Johndroe and the president are either ignorant of, or willfully
denying what reputable historians have already written: Armenia was a
genocide. There’s dozens, if not hundreds, of history books on Turkey,
Armenia, the Ottoman Empire, etc., that all cover it in detail.
Besides Bush/Johndroe are wrong in another way: The "why" of any
mass murder moves beyond history into psychology, sociology and –
political science.
As for Bush’s claims this will severely dent relations with Turkey
(as if the botching of Iraq and consequent emboldening of Kurdish
rebels inside Turkey hasn’t done anything), that may be hot air out
of both Washington and Ankara, as much as anything:
"Turkey has been threatening every sort of doomsday scenario,"
says Armenian National Committee of America Executive Director Aram
Hamparian. "We have been saying that Turkey would harm itself more
than the United States if it carries through with these threats."
As for Turkey’s call to have a set of international experts examine
the issue, fine, let’s do that – as soon as Ankara stops criminalizing
and censoring discussion of this issue by Turkey’s own historians.