I should hope they don't pull a double standard on this.
On what might at first glance be a totally unrelated note - if all you knew about it was what was in the article - Islam is a religion of peace.
That is laughable. I suppose the Jews shot by the Nazis just accidentally walked into a speeding bullet.
Hey Prez---we do not need the lying scummy Turks! Call a spade a spade. They are butchers and are responsible for the 20th century's first genocide of christians. Actually Muslim Turks are responsible for horrors never seen in Europe for a thousand years.
Can you have a "genocide" if the ethnic/linguistic/religious group still exists after the event?
Why do you and the author imply that the two terms (genocide and tragedy) are somehow mutually exclusive?
Genocide is a tragedy, isn't it?
Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.
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Raphael Lemkin, a Polish attorney who coined the term genocide and was the individual most responsible for the Genocide Treaty was inspired in his choice of "career", by the Armenian Genocide.
Key Writings of Raphael Lemkin on Genocide
See the next post.
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
Dec. 8, 2005
We are so absorbed in the fast pace of day to day events that we often overlook the fact that many of today’s issues have their roots in important developments that predate our short-term memories.
For example, as we speak about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, not everyone realizes that “genocide” is a word that was not coined until 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist. Turkish propagandists know this well. They point out that what happened to the Armenians could be a massacre or a tragedy, but not genocide, simply because the term genocide did not exist back in 1915. This argument is as ridiculous as saying that Cain could not have murdered Abel because the word murder was not yet invented at that time!
Mr. Lemkin had repeatedly mentioned in his writings that as a young man he was so troubled by the Armenian mass murders and the then on-going Holocaust that he coined the word genocide and worked tirelessly until the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, on Dec. 9, 1948.
A recently discovered half-hour CBS program, first broadcast in 1949, includes a rare TV interview with Lemkin on the UN Convention and the Armenian Genocide. A short segment of that interview was shown last month by documentary filmmaker Andrew Goldberg during a ceremony held in New York City, awarding Peter Balakian the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize for his book, “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response.”
We were able to obtain a copy of that entire TV program which was moderated by CBS’s Quincy Howe. He begins the show with a recap of various genocides throughout history. Here is the transcript of his narration on the Armenian Genocide as well as the interview with Lemkin:
“Modern man too -- man in the last 100 years -- has been guilty of this crime of group murder. Choosing so-called modern reasons and using modern methods, men of our own time have persecuted and destroyed other men, singling them out because of the group to which they belonged. We all remember some of these instances. Do you also think of them as cases of genocide?”
Over scenes of Ottoman Turkish soldiers on horseback chasing down and killing unarmed Armenian men, women and children, the moderator continues:
“Yes, these folks are not playing games. They are running for their lives. Men on horseback. It doesn’t matter much who they are. Let’s say they are modern cavalry out on orders of their commanders. They are huntsmen out on the chase. Only, the prey doesn’t happen to be a fox. The prey is people. These [showing film footage of a group of Armenians] were the victims. They are Armenians and the place is in Asia Minor. But that doesn’t matter either. They could be anyone, anywhere. Of course, it mattered to them. Nearly 2 million of them were driven from their homes to perish in the desert or die before they got there. Why? Well, the reason given was that they were friendly to the enemy of their rulers; that they were a fifth column; that they were spies. Every one of the 2 million of them….”
Raphael Lemkin then explains to the moderator how his interest in genocide began: “I became interested in genocide because it happened to the Armenians; and after[wards] the Armenians got a very rough deal at the Versailles Conference because their criminals were guilty of genocide and were not punished. You know that they [the Ottoman Turks] were organized in a terroristic organization which took justice into its own hands. The trial of Talaat Pasha in 1921 in Berlin is very instructive. A man (Soghomon Tehlirian), whose mother was killed in the genocide, killed Talaat Pasha. And he told the court that he did it because his mother came in his sleep ... many times. Here, …the murder of your mother, you would do something about it! So he committed a crime. So, you see, as a lawyer, I thought that a crime should not be punished by the victims, but should be punished by a court, by a national law.”
Cong. Emanuel Celler (D-NY), who was also interviewed in that same CBS program, added: “Pres. Wilson, a great democratic leader, tried to save the Armenian people from genocide during the First World War and shortly thereafter.”
This newly discovered tape has great historical value. It defines the Armenian Genocide as a genocide just a few weeks after the adoption of the UN convention on genocide and shows Raphael Lemkin explaining how he was influenced by the tragic events that befell the Armenians in 1915. Anyone seeing this interview with Lemkin and the accompanying film footage would have no doubt that genocide is the most appropriate term to describe the mass murder of Armenians.
Following Stalin's aphorism, I'm surprised he didn't call 1915 a "statistic".
That's a pretty damn strong statement. Ridiculous to try and portray this as some slap in the face denial. Sheesh, you sound like Jesse Jackson and the perpetual victimology crowd. Do you wake up each morning asking "How can I be offended today?"
Alternate title "Bush caves to Turks, insults the memory of over a million genocide victims."
Why does Bush even need to make a statement for the 91st Anniversary of Armenian genocide?
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:
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"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?
Why did the Armenians get the works.
That's nobody's business but the Turks.
"Bush invited all parties to take part in dialogue and determine common understanding, and he praised the parties in both Turkey and Armenia who examine the happenings of 1915 impartially, accurately and sensitively."
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The Turks murdered the Armenians - killed the men and enslaved the women and forced them to convert to the Moon-God.
What else is there to "examine"?
He must be using the same side of his brain he used to create the Harriet Miers Caper, Dubai Port Deal, and the "guest worker/amnesty" program.
Oh well, we apparently have three more years to view his steady drift to the left on social issues I suppose.
That is, unless his antics loose us Congress in 2006, in which case he'll be impeached and we will have Cheney as President - a significant improvement in my eyes.