Posted on 03/14/2007 8:12:13 AM PDT by theothercheek
The Stiletto had a lot on her plate these past few days – the Libby case, global warming, Ann Coulter, the appeals court ruling that gun ownership does not require militia membership – so this irrational and insensitive WaPo op-ed piece on H.R. 106 by columnist Jackson Diehl got back burnered. If revenge is a dish best eaten cold, The Stiletto is now ready to dig in.
A nonbinding resolution, H.R. 106, was introduced by Adam Schiff (D-CA) on January 30, 2007 ("Affitrmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution"). The resolution:
Diehl describes the furious lobbying for and against the genocide resolution (or, as he puts it, the "genocide" resolution – even though he concedes the Ottoman Turks committed genocide towards the end of his piece):
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul "spent several days in Washington last month lobbying against it … Friends of Turkey in Washington … are working the Hill; so is the Bush team." And on the other side "the well-organized and affluent Armenian American community, 1.4 million strong, and some powerful friends - including the new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi."
A high-ranking Turkish government official flies halfway around the world to lobby against a symbolic resolution, joined by an army of paid lobbyists and members of the Bush administration. Armenian-American genocide survivors and their families – not a high-ranking government official from Armenia or paid lobbyists or Bushies – are fighting for a floor vote on the resolution. Clearly, the Turkish side is better "organized," and has more powerful friends than Schiff and Pelosi.
And so what if the Armenian-American community is affluent? Don’t Armenians deserve justice for what increasingly is being regarded as the first Muslim jihad against a Christian population in modern history? Would Diehl argue that Germany owes nothing to Holocaust survivors and descendants because Jews have also prospered in America?
The Turkish culture does not place a high premium on education (in every European country in which Turks have settled, large numbers have become an unskilled, unschooled, unemployed underclass). In contrast, Armenians are a cultured, multilingual people who study hard, work hard and deserve the affluence and success that results. That Armenians are an immigrant success story in the U.S. – and everywhere else they have settled in the Diaspora - somehow erases Turkey’s crime against humanity and its obligation to history?
Some – by no means all – Armenian-Americans may be well-off materially, but after successive massacres that began in the mid-1800s and culminated in the Genocide of 1915-1917, the Ottoman Turks impoverished Armenians in the only way that really matters: They nearly destroyed the entire gene pool (warning: graphic images), making Armenians an endangered species. Nearly 100 years later, Armenian families are still adversely affected by the loss of so many of their men, women and children as family surnames and familial lines dwindle and are extinguished.
Diehl continues: "[I]n Turkey there is the painful struggle of a deeply nationalist society to come to terms with its past, and in the process become more of the Western democracy it wants to be."
Diehl obviously does not understand the implications of Turkish nationalism, and how Armenians are still in grave peril in this "democratic" nation that is 99.8 percent Muslim:
† Nationalist racism against Armenians runs so rampant that Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s assassin is videotaped posing for souvenir photos with the local police – after confessing "I shot the Armenian";
† Days after Dink was shot dead in the street – because the Turkish government refused to provide protection after he received numerous death threats from nationalists – thousands of fans in a soccer stadium shouted anti-Armenian slogans to spur their team on (second item, The Daily Blade, February 5, 2007);
† Every schoolchild – even Armenians whose ancestors were murdered by the Ottomans - is forced to recite "the Turkish Oath" in school:
I am a Turk, I am honest. I am a hard worker. My rule is to protect those younger and to respect my elders, and to love my country and my nation more than myself. My goal is to enhance and to get higher. May my life be a present to the Turkish people. Honorable, unreachable Ataturk! I give my oath to continue towards reaching the targets you showed, to walk on the road you have opened, in the country you created. How happy I am to say I am a Turk (emphasis, The Stiletto’s).
Imagine the psychic damage to an Armenian child having to state day after day that (s)he is "happy" to be a Turk. Imagine what it’s like for Armenians to live amongst a people who believe they are a Master Race – or are so neurotically insecure that they have a deep psychological need to recite a daily Stuart Smalley affirmation in school.
Then Diehl takes up the Turkish argument against passage of the House resolution:
Turkey's powerful military has been hinting that U.S. access to the Incirlik air base, which plays a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, could be restricted. Gul warned that a nationalist tidal wave could sweep Turkey and force the government to downgrade its cooperation with the United States, which needs Turkey's help this year to stabilize Iraq and contain Iran.
Well before the shift in political climate that allowed H.R. 106 to be debated and voted on, Turkey had already restricted use of its military facilities when the U.S. wanted to invade Iraq from the north. The only reason Turkey is willing to "help" us now is the palpable fear that Iraq is so destabilized that the country will ultimately be partitioned, creating an autonomous Kurdish region. Let’s be real: regardless of whether H.R. 106 is adopted, Turks will continue to "help" to prevent this outcome – and in return for U.S. assistance in suppressing Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
But when you get down to the nitty gritty, Turkey’s usefulness as an American ally came to an end the day the Berlin Wall was torn down. A handy staging ground when the U.S. and Europe were fighting the spread of communism, Turkey has already proven itself a shaky, high-maintenance "ally" in the struggle to turn back the tide of Islamofascism that is inexorably sweeping the globe. To win this war, the U.S. needs new allies. Any of the Baltic nations – Christian, European, stable – would be more suitable than Turkey to host U.S. military facilities.
Finally, Diehl closes with a classic "Emily Latilla" that entirely negates everything that came before:
[H]istorians outside of Turkey are pretty much unanimous in agreeing that atrocities against Armenians worthy of the term genocide did occur. … the continuing inability of the Turkish political class to come to terms with history, and temper its nationalism, may be the country's single most serious political problem. Prominent Turkish intellectuals, including a Nobel Prize winner, have been prosecuted in recent years under laws criminalizing "insults" to Turkey - such as accurate accounts of the genocide. In January a prominent ethnic Armenian journalist was murdered by an ultranationalist teenager.
Enough of the nonsense being peddled by Turks, their apologists and Moonies (third item, The Daily Blade, March 2, 2007). Given the grievous losses the Armenian people suffered, and the continuing harm Armenians continue to suffer as a result of Turkey’s remorseless policy of denial, adopting H.R. 106 is the morally right thing to do. The U.S. should join the EU and the rest of the civilized world in prodding Turkey to do the just and honorable thing.
NOTE: A lotta links in this! In case I messed any of them up, please refer to the original source.
One of the things the Turks did was to cut off the hands of Armenian children. One contemporary account from a soldier says that there were so many hands in one place he saw, you could have paved the road with them.
I did not know this. How depraved and horrific.
Not surprised thats typical of islam
Check out the link in the article about the Genocide being the first jihad in modern history. Turkey can never be our ally in the WOT. They're just using us to keep the Kurds under control.
"Nearly 100 years later, Armenian families are still adversely affected by the loss of so many of their men, women and children as family surnames and familial lines dwindle and are extinguished."
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The above quote is very true......
Has this happened to you or to someone you know?
The Islamic Ottoman Empire did repress and massacre the Christian Armenians under their rule, but that's not related to this account. The secular Young Turks took over from the old Islamic order in 1908, with the help of the Armenians wanting freedom. Some of the more politically radical of the Young Turks staged a coup in 1913, bringing to power those who committed the genocide.
The Young Turks themselves were secular but they riled up and exploited the Muslim fervor of the uneducated masses to help them carry out the mass killings. Today, nationalism in Turkey is increasingly becoming conflated with Islamism. So when it comes down to it, as a country that is 99.8 percent Muslim, it does not matter to the Chrisitian minorities whether secularism or Islamism holds sway. Either way they are in constant danger - which is why the Pope made it his business to address this issue when he visited Turkey last November.
Then you could probably say the nationalist Hitler riled up the Christian masses to help him carry out the mass killings of Jews. Hitler must have looked to Talat Pasha when formulating his Final Solution.
That there was some ingrained hatred is undeniable, but the Muslim authorities were happy to keep the Armenians as second-class citizens, and only murder them when they got out of place. It took the secular Young Turks to turn it into genocide in a nationalist fervor (they claimed the Armenians were pro-Russian subverts).
Actually, you are dead on about Hitler. His cronies told him he couldn't possibly pull of something on the scale of the Holocaust, to which he replied: "Who today remembers the Armenians?" And yes, the Ottomans did claim that Armenians had been joining invading Russian forces - plus, with all their other Christian holdings breaking free of the Empire they were going to stop Armenians from doing the same.
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