MORE ON RECOGNIZING THE ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST
Thomas Lifson
American Thinker, AZ
Aug 27 2007
Robert Stacy McCain, of the Washington Times’ Insider Politics blog,
cites counter-arguments to Andrew G. Bostom’s AT article yesterday
insisting that Congress must recognize the Armenian Holocaust. He
writes:
…the Armenians suffered horribly under the Ottoman Empire, [but]
I’m nevertheless skeptical that congressional "recognition" will be
particularly helpful to Armenians (or anyone else) nearly a century
after the fact.
Garin Hovannisian, a recent UCLA graduate and a descendant of survivors
of the Armenian genocide, shares that sense of skepticism:
That Congress "finds" the genocide to be a fact makes the tragedy no
more real than its refusal, so far, has made it unreal. Truth does
not need a permission slip from the state.
As an heir, moreover, of an American tradition of limited government,
I am annoyed that the legislature is poking into a sphere in which
it has neither business nor experience: the province of truth. It is
bad enough that a committee of aristocrats governs the conventions
of politics, economics and human rights. We the citizens scarcely
need to sign over the laws of nature, too, lest gravity be repealed
and the whole race goes floating about the universe.
Garin and his fellow Armenian-American, Alec Mouhibian — also a
recent UCLA grad — operate the Lucky Frown blog, where most of what
they write has nothing to do with being Armenian, and everything to
do with being American. [….]
…identity politics is exactly what Garin sees at work in the
matter of H.R. 106. "The Armenian genocide resolution is, quite
simply, the raison d’etre of the Armenian-American lobby," he writes,
describing the resolution as the project of "congressmen with Armenian
constituencies."