Posted on 04/25/2006 8:07:22 PM PDT by x5452
Why does Bush even need to make a statement for the 91st Anniversary of Armenian genocide?
As I noted earlier, I don't think there is any legal significance to the term, other than prosecution of the perpetrators. Clearly it's an accusation against Turkey, a deserved accusation
Life insurance claims would be a matter of contract law in the country of issue,
Also the country the company is housed or operates in. Often more successful.
The real reason for the Armenian genocide wasn't religion, but nationalism on the part of the Young Turks. Remember, most Albanians were Muslim.
Why not blame Bush for the genocide, while you're at it?
What was that major brain fart? I was thinking of Albanians I guess. Of course they were Christian.
BTW, the Armenian genocide gives a very stark reminder: It started with disarming the Armenian population.
Noted conservative historian Bernard Lewis who is an expert on the ME and Islamic conflicts, author of the expression "clash of civilizations" used with regard to the West and Islam, refutes the genocide of Armenians:
...................
"Lewis continues: "Wrong assumptions were also adopted by journalists of "Haaretz" in connection to the whole polemics. These are mainly two issues: a) that the massacres of the Armenians in 1915 and the extermination of the Jews of Europe are basically events of the same kind; b) any critical discourse of the Armenian massacres is similar to Neo-Nazi denial of the Shoah. "Anybody who has a minimum concept of the historical evidence will admit that these analogies have no validity. The Armenians are proud of their struggle for an independent Armenia against the Ottoman regime. It was a national liberation movement, and they fought with great courage. But what happened to the Armenians has no similarity to what happened to the Jews in cold-blooded bureaucracy."
Q: Why is this distinction so important for you?
"Because I am not a Turk nor an Armenian and I have no allegiance to any of these groups. I am a historian and my loyalties are to truth. The concept of genocide was defined legally. It is a term that the UN used and the Nuremberg trials made use of it [as well]. I side with words which have accurate meaning. In my view a loose and ambiguous use of words is bad."The meaning of genocide is the planned destruction of a religious and ethnic group, as far as it is known to me, there is no evidence for that in the case of the Armenians. The deniers of Holocaust have a purpose: to prolong Nazism and to return to Nazi legislation. Nobody wants the 'Young Turks' back, and nobody want to have back the Ottoman Law. What do the Armenians want?
"The Armenians want to benefit from both worlds. On the one hand, they speak with pride of their struggle against the Ottoman despotism, while on the other hand, they compare their tragedy to the Jewish Holocaust. I do not accept this. I do not say that the Armenians did not suffer terribly. But I find enough cause for me to contain their attempts to use the Armenian massacres to diminish the worth of the Jewish Holocaust and to relate to it instead as an ethnic dispute."
http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/armenian/lewis.html
Lewis is not 'denying' the killing of Armenians, but is distinguishing between genocide, killing to ethnically cleanse a population at peace within the society, and an armed struggle of different ethnic groups for autonomy and control.
A more recent example of the latter is the Serbian conflict. If Armenia was genocide, wasn't Bosnia?
It's little wonder the Greeks hate the Turks so much.
They know what the Islamic yoke was like, and soon Western Europe will wish it hadn't turned its back on Charles Martel and Queen Isabella of Spain.
Now, it seems the French are losing the Second Battle of Tours.
The West did nothing during World War I to protect the Christians who were being slaughtered by the Ottomans.
When did you start hating Armenians?
It's about having the balls to stand up for what is right and call it what it was -- genocide. But Bush won't because he doesn't want to harm relations with Turkey, which basically says it was all a big accident.
The Ottoman Young Turk movement was committed to ridding the Ottoman Empire of its non-Turkish population.
Here is a Web site documenting the attrocities, which were systematic.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/research.html
You all remember that Hitler famously said, "Go, kill without mercy. After all, who remembers the Armenians?"
If we can not come to terms and acknowledge Genocide which occured almost 100 years ago we are doomed to repeat these same mistakes (all because we don't want to offend anyone). Both Clinton and Bush have failed to rightfully pronounce these actions as Genocide and both have a miserable record stopping it while it is occuring on their watch. Never again my @$$!
It is interesting and also sad how correct Hitler was when he noted, in reflection upon his own acknowledgement that the Turkish genocide of the Armenians was the inspiration for his extermination of the Jews in WWII, that no one would remember the Armenians.
I forgot to mention Bush had this to say in 2000, "the Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign...If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people."
Why did the Armenians get the works.
That's nobody's business but the Turks.
It seems to me that many of those who want to use this commemoration as an occasion to shove it in the face of Turkey's leaders (none of whom had anything to do with it), also want to stick a finger in the eye of Muslims. Is that about right?
Lewis is not 'denying' the killing of Armenians, but is distinguishing between genocide, killing to ethnically cleanse a population at peace within the society, and an armed struggle of different ethnic groups for autonomy and control.
Not relevant to this issue, but genocide doesn’t require killing. Hitler’s plan to enslave the Poles was genocidal, even had they been treated well in slave labor camps. Our attempt to solve the Indian problem by removing children from their parents and re-educating them as Christians was likely genocidal. Killing civilians with the intent of exterminating their culture from the region is genocide, irrespective of whether an armed struggle. IMO acts of genocide went on in Bosnia, as well as todays Kosovo
Obviously the term didn’t exist at the time, but as I noted in an earlier post, Raphael Lemkin clearly considered it genocide. Henry Morgenthau, who resigned his post due to American inaction, was of essentially the same opinion.
Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1913-16)
When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact."
"Practically all of them were atheists, with no more respect for Mohammedanism than for Christianity, and with them the one motive was cold-blooded, calculating state policy."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One day I was discussing these proceedings with a responsible Turkish official, who was describing the tortures inflicted. He made no secret of the fact that the Government had instigated them, and, like all Turks of the official classes, he enthusiastically approved this treatment of the detested race. This official told me that all these details were matters of nightly discussion at the headquarters of the Union and Progress Committee. Each new method of inflicting pain was hailed as a splendid discovery, and the regular attendants were constantly ransacking their brains in the effort to devise some new torment. He told me that they even delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and other historic institutions of torture and adopted all the suggestions found there. He did not tell me who carried off the prize in this gruesome competition, but common reputation through Armenia gave a preeminent infamy to Djevdet Bey, the Vali of Van, whose activities in that section I have already described. All through this country Djevdet was generally known as the "horseshoer of Bashkale" for this connoisseur in torture had invented what was perhaps the masterpiece of all — that of nailing horseshoes to the feet of his Armenian victims.
Yet these happenings did not constitute what the newspapers of the time commonly referred to as the Armenian atrocities; they were merely the preparatory steps in the destruction of the race. The Young Turks displayed greater ingenuity than their predecessor, Abdul Hamid. The injunction of the deposed Sultan was merely "to kill, kill", whereas the Turkish democracy hit upon an entirely new plan. Instead of massacring outright the Armenian race, they now decided to deport it. In the south and southeastern section of the Ottoman Empire lie the Syrian desert and the Mesopotamian valley. Though part of this area was once the scene of a flourishing civilization, for the last five centuries it has suffered the blight that becomes the lot of any country that is subjected to Turkish rule; and it is now a dreary, desolate waste, without cities and towns or life of any kind, populated only by a few wild and fanatical Bedouin tribes. Only the most industrious labour, expended through many years, could transform this desert into the abiding place of any considerable population. The Central Government now announced its intention of gathering the two million or more Armenians living in the several sections of the empire and transporting them to this desolate and inhospitable region. Had they undertaken such a deportation in good faith it would have represented the height of cruelty and injustice. As a matter of fact, the Turks never had the slightest idea of reestablishing the Armenians in this new country. They knew that the great majority would never reach their destination and that those who did would either die of thirst and starvation, or be murdered by the wild Mohammedan desert tribes. The real purpose of the deportation was robbery and destruction; it really represented a new methods of massacre. When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.
[paragraphs omitted]
I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915. The slaughter of the Albigenses in the early part of the thirteenth century has always been regarded as one of the most pitiful events in history. In these outbursts of fanaticism about 60,000 people were killed. In the massacre of St. Bartholomew about 30,000 human beings lost their lives. The Sicilian Vespers, which has always figured as one of the most fiendish outbursts of this kind, caused the destruction of 8,000. Volumes have been written about the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada, yet in the eighteen years of his administration only a little more that 8,000 heretics were done to death. Perhaps the one event in history that most resembles the Armenian deportations was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. According to Prescott 160,000 were uprooted from their homes and scattered broadcast over Africa and Europe. Yet all these previous persecutions seem almost trivial when we compare them with the sufferings of the Armenians, in which at least 600,000 people were destroyed and perhaps as many as 1,000,000. And these earlier massacres when we compare them with the spirit that directed the Armenian atrocities, have one feature that we can almost describe as an excuse: they were the product of religious fanaticism and most of the men and women who instigated them sincerely believed that they were devoutly serving their Maker. Undoubtedly religious fanaticism was an impelling motive with the Turkish and Kurdish rabble who slew Armenians as a service to Allah, but the men who really conceived the crime had no such motive. Practically all of them were atheists, with no more respect for Mohammedanism than for Christianity, and with them the one motive was cold-blooded, calculating state policy.
Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.: 1919), pp. 307-309, 321-323
Correct. This was a Jihadist genocide by the Turks. 400,000 Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by Muslims
Islam = Jihad
From the Turkish view, more accurately, putting down a rebellion with a million plus accitental occasions of collateral damage.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.