Why now?
Why 90 years after the fact would Democrats demand a resolution condemning Armenians for genocide from 1915 to 1917?
From AFP:
The timing of this is unreal.
The Democrats are being inexcusably and intentionally irresponsible. I can't interpret this as anything other than a calculated effort to stir up a hornet's nest.
Anything to undermine the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. Anything to score political points with the fringe base.
What's unforgivable is that the Dems don't seem to care about the impact this could have on the troops.
The resolution is a roundabout way to cut off supplies to our military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's sick.
There are occasions when the poisonous political climate and the divisions in my country really depresses me.
This is one of those times.
Why 90 years after the fact would Democrats demand a resolution condemning Armenians for genocide from 1915 to 1917?
From AFP:
Top US Democrats Sunday brushed off Turkish fury and vowed to press ahead with an Armenian "genocide" bill, insisting that bloodshed today demanded a righting of past wrongs.
But Republicans accused the party in control of Congress of waging an "irresponsible" campaign of dubious historical validity that would hurt US troops in Iraq.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said possible reprisals affecting Turkey's cooperation with the US military were "hypothetical" and would not derail the resolution.
"I said if it passed the committee that we would bring it to the floor," she said on ABC television after the House foreign affairs committee last week branded the Ottoman Empire's World War I massacre of Armenians a genocide.
"Genocide still exists, and we saw it in Rwanda; we see it now in Darfur," Pelosi said.
"Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values -- Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture. All of those issues (are) about who we are as a country," she added.
According to Armenians, at least 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1917 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and murder. Turkey bitterly disputes the number of dead and the characterization of "genocide."
The bill is likely to come up in the full House in November. Although the resolution is only symbolic, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Washington last week and has called off visits to the United States by at least two of its officials.
The angry reaction has fueled fears within the US administration that it could lose access to a military base in NATO ally Turkey that provides a crucial staging ground for US supplies headed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two top US officials, one each from the state and defense departments, are now in Turkey to try to cool the diplomatic row.
"We are certainly working to try to minimize any concrete steps the government might take (such as) restricting the movement of our troops," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday in Moscow.
Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates lobbied hard against the genocide resolution, and the administration says it will keep up its effort to forestall a vote in the full House of Representatives.
US-Turkish military ties "will never be the same again" if the House confirms the committee vote, Turkey's military chief General Yasar Buyukanit told the daily Milliyet on Sunday.
The timing of this is unreal.
The Democrats are being inexcusably and intentionally irresponsible. I can't interpret this as anything other than a calculated effort to stir up a hornet's nest.
Anything to undermine the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. Anything to score political points with the fringe base.
What's unforgivable is that the Dems don't seem to care about the impact this could have on the troops.
The resolution is a roundabout way to cut off supplies to our military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's sick.
There are occasions when the poisonous political climate and the divisions in my country really depresses me.
This is one of those times.
8 comments:
What is unforgivable is that it has taken 90 years for this country to speak up on this issue and that this administration is willing to overlook genocide because to do otherwise would be politically inconvenient. It is funny how, when he was running for president, Bush thought such a resolution was a good idea, and promised to push for it in congress, but now he thinks it is bad because it might inconvenience his war.
Also, wasn't one of the reasons we attacked Iraq in the first place because Saddam had persecuted the Kurds in his country, killing thousands of them? What about the attacks Turkey carries out on the Kurds? Perhaps we should invade them too, instead of kissing their a**es for the right to overfly and supply from bases there.
Ah, yes. So many genocides, so few apologies, so little action.
What was done during the Rwandan genocide?
Cue the crickets.
You can try to turn this into a "Bush's war" thing, but that's a cheap, politically opportunistic move.
So much is unforgivable.
I'm a Democrat, but the insulting stupidity of this purely political act turns my stomach. The genocide took place under a despotic government which no longer exists, and even if this were not true, who benefits from such an action now? With all the criticism of the Bush administration's actions which have cost us so much credibility in the world and lost us so many friends, for the Democrats to do this now is obscenely hypocritical.
Ah, but Iraq is Bush's war. You don't see many people (even on the left) complaining about the war in Afghanistan (other than perhaps that it is not going as well as it ought to be). The reason? When somebody attacks you, you have every right to go kick their a**!
The thing that gets me is that in response to 9/11, Bush decided to go kick somebody else's a**. If somebody punches you in a bar, do you go out in the parking lot and clobber the parking attendant? Or perhaps after Pearl Harbor, we should have launched a war against China. No, you deck the guy in the bar, you go after Japan, and you invade Afghanistan and CAPTURE or KILL Bin Laden. What you don't do is go on a fruitless nation building exercise in Iraq.
So why did we go to war in Irag? Saddam had WMD? Yes, everybody thought Saddam had them and the UN was looking for them, but strangely couldn't find them (because, it turns out, he didn't have them). Meanwhile, Pakistan and India both have nukes, and so does North Korea, but we didn't invade them.
Perhaps because Saddam was a very bad man? There is an endless list of bad men ruling countries around the world. How many of them are we going to preemptively attack? Also, what made him a bad man? The attacks against the Kurds, for one, but similar attacks by Turkey against the Kurds don't seem to be a problem for anyone who supports the war in Iraq.
Saddam was a cruel dictator who tortured people? This is perhaps the saddest reason of all, because in our efforts to bring 'democracy' to the middle east by force, we have decided that perhaps it is OK to torture people a little bit. And if getting the information we want requires more torture than we can stomach, why, let's just hand them over to somebody who can do the real torturing for us. What a proud day for democracy and the rule of law.
And 6 years, 3,000+ dead American soldiers (God bless them), tens of thousands of wounded American soldiers, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of billions of dollars later, Bin Laden is still alive and well, and probably organizing more attacks against this country.
In response to jefferson: if the Armenian genocide took place under a despotic government that no longer exists, then the current government shouldn't have any problem admitting that such a terrible event took place so long ago, should it? Instead, the current government imprisons people for suggesting that something bad might have happened to the Armenians, and threatens retaliation against any country that draws attention to what happened 90 years ago.
In response to Mary: What about the President's campaign promise to do exactly what the House has done?
And by the way, I was outraged by this country's lack of response during the genocide in Rwanda - we should have been first in line to do what is right, not because it is easy (it almost never is) but because that is what I was raised to believe this country stood for.
I noticed that in your enthusiastic support for the war in Iraq you didn't catch a recent story about Lt. General Sanchez, a former commander of our forces there.
From the New York times, Oct. 12, 2007:
In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top American commander called the Bush administration’s handling of the war incompetent and warned that the United States was “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”
In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability.
“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.
General Sanchez is the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war. Asked following his remarks why he waited nearly a year after his retirement to outline his views, he responded that that it was not the place of active duty officers to challenge lawful orders from civilian authorities. General Sanchez, who is said to be considering a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.
“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”
...
“The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for the catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” General Sanchez said.
I asked the same question, Mary. Why now?
As for your long-winded anonymous commenter... I still respect people who at least give an ID 'handle'. I also find it to be an interesting tidbit that he/she only picked out the part of Lt Gen Sanchez' speech that was in the NY Times... and did not mention that the same man, in the same speech also lambasted the media for "unscrupulous reporting, solely focused on supporting an agenda and preconceived notions of the U.S. military."
OK, so now I have a 'handle', and I will claim ownership to all three anonymous postings in this thread. I will also point out that so far, nobody on the right has had a single response to any of the questions or issues that I raised.
Instead, I get the typical right wing response - side step the issue and throw in an insult to belittle the other point of view.
I will admit that it can be fun to insult people, and there is certainly a time and a place for everything. But the future of our country is at stake in the decisions our elected representatives make, and I had hoped to find somebody out there who might have an interest in reasoned dialog. I guess my expectations were too high.
Anonymous/August26--
Be aware that sometimes it takes a while to get around to adding my own comments to the comment sections, if I do it at all.
It would be great to have a civil, well-reasoned debate, but there are only so many hours in a day. My time online has some limits.
I'm not side stepping your questions. However, I admit it's tiresome to rehash the same stuff.
And be honest about the alleged insults.
What are you talking about?
Give me a break.
One more thing--
Sorry I don't live up to your expectations.
Post a Comment