Sugarcoated history is for sale, but I'm not buying it

[Tongue]

Sugarcoated history is for sale, but I'm not buying it

President Bush and some members of Congress say this isn't the time to rile Turkey by addressing horrors of the past.

The things you learn.

I didn't know there was a wrong time to denounce the massacre of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915.

Or that situational ethics should trump America's moral obligation to officially recognize the truth: The Turks waged genocide.

Well, we can make at least one thing official.

History's on sale, and the politicians are wheeling and dealing with an ally in the Iraq war.

"One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire," says Bush, who is pressing the House of Representatives to forget about a nonbinding resolution recognizing the genocide.

Bush is wrong, and so is Rep. Jane Harman, a liberal Democrat from Los Angeles who co-sponsored the resolution but wants to tuck it away until a more convenient day.

The Turks can call it what they want, but historians have provided ample evidence of the atrocities. Women and children died because of forced starvation. Cultural leaders were murdered. Thousands of Armenians were asphyxiated in caves that foreshadowed Nazi gas chambers.

The final death count: 1.5 million Armenians. A goodly number of their descendants live here in the San Joaquin Valley.

One of them is Rob Saroyan of Fresno, who is disappointed about the resolution's diminishing prospects for passage. "When we so easily compromise the truth," he says, "it erodes my faith in the tenets we're founded on."

Saroyan knows better than most that compromise is part of politics. Early in his professional career, he was an aide to then-California Gov. George Deukmejian and held other political jobs in Sacramento.

"I understand how the process works and how deals are cut," Saroyan says. "It's just too bad [Armenian-Americans] don't have the political leverage. Every year, there's an excuse why we can't do the resolution."

Rep. George Radanovich of Mariposa repeatedly has sought genocide recognition. This year, with Democrats in charge of Congress, lawmakers Jim Costa of Fresno and Dennis Cardoza of Merced are leading efforts.

If this resolution fails, the Armenian community will try again next year. And the next. Until -- international relations of the moment be damned -- the right thing, finally, is done.

"This only strengthens my resolve to carry on, because it resurrects the suffering of our grandparents and great-grandparents," Saroyan says, his voice cracking during a telephone interview.

"I remember seeing my grandfather, a strong man, crying. He was robbed of his mother and father as a child. It burned him, and I felt like he lived with hate and questions of why it happened."

Longtime Republican activist Mike Der Manouel Jr. of Fresno wants Bush and Congress to call Turkey's bluff and adopt the resolution. His paternal grandfather's first wife and their children were killed in the genocide.

"How is the official denial in Turkey any different than the Iranian [president] denying the Jewish Holocaust? It isn't," Der Manouel says.

The resolution isn't only about what happened to Armenians a long time ago. It's about what America stands for. Have we reached the point that right and wrong and the sanctity of life matter less than strategic imperatives?

With history for sale, the ugly answer stares us in the face.

Bill McEwen

[Helen]

The U.S. and Turkey: Honesty Is the Best Policy
Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007 By SAMANTHA POWER

Ninety-two years ago, the "Young Turk" regime ordered the executions of Armenian civic leaders and intellectuals, and Turkish soldiers and militia forced the Armenian population to march into the desert, where more than a million died by bayonet or starvation. That horror helped galvanize Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, to invent the word genocide, which was defined not as the extermination of an entire group but rather as a systematic effort to destroy a group. Lemkin wanted the term — and the international legal convention that grew out of it — to encompass ethnic cleansing and the murdering of a substantial part of a group. Otherwise, he feared, the world would wait until an entire group had been wiped out before taking any action.

But this month in Washington these historical truths — about events carried out on another continent, in another century — are igniting controversy among politicians as if the harms were unsubstantiated, local and recent. At stake, of course, is the question of whether the U.S. House of Representatives should offend Turkey by passing a resolution condemning the "Armenian genocide" of 1915.

All actors in the debate are playing the roles they have played for decades. Turkish General Yasar Buyukanit warned that if the House proceeds with a vote, "our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again." Having recognized the genocide while campaigning for the White House, President George W. Bush nevertheless followed in the footsteps of his Oval Office predecessors, bemoaning the euphemistic "tragic suffering" of Armenians and wheeling out men and women of diplomatic and military rank to argue that the resolution would harm the indispensable U.S.-Turkish relationship. In Congress, Representatives in districts populated by Armenians generally support the measure, while those well cudgeled or coddled by the President or Pentagon don't. Official pressure has led many sponsors of the resolution to withdraw their support.

One feature of the decades-old script is new: the Turkish threats have greater credibility today than in the past. Mainly this is because the U.S. war in Iraq has dramatically increased Turkish leverage over Washington. Some 70% of U.S. air cargo en route to Iraq passes through Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military there. While Turkey may react negatively in the short term, recognition of the genocide is warranted for four reasons. First, the House resolution tells the truth, and the U.S. would be the 24th country to officially acknowledge it. In arguing against the resolution, Bush hasn't dared dispute the facts. An Administration that has shown little regard for the truth is openly urging Congress to join it in avoiding honesty. It is inconceivable that even back in the days when the U.S. prized West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, Washington would have refrained from condemning the Holocaust at Germany's behest.

Second, the passage of time is only going to increase the size of the thorn in the side of what is indeed a valuable relationship with Turkey. Many a U.S. official (and even the occasional senior Turkish official) admits in private to wishing the U.S. had recognized the genocide years ago. Armenian survivors are passing away, but their descendants have vowed to continue the struggle. The vehemence of the Armenian diaspora is increasing, not diminishing. Third, America's leverage over Turkey is far greater than Turkey's over the U.S. The U.S. brought Turkey into NATO, built up its military and backed its membership in the European Union. Washington granted most-favored-nation trading status to Turkey, resulting in some $7 billion in annual trade between the two countries and $2 billion in U.S. investments there. Only Israel and Egypt outrank Turkey as recipients of U.S. foreign assistance. And fourth, for all the help Turkey has given the U.S. concerning Iraq, Ankara turned down Washington's request to use Turkish bases to launch the Iraq invasion, and it ignored Washington's protests by massing 60,000 troops at the Iraq border this month as a prelude to a widely expected attack in Iraqi Kurdistan. In other words, while Turkey may invoke the genocide resolution as grounds for ignoring U.S. wishes, it has a longer history of snubbing Washington when it wants to.

Back in 1915, when Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, protested the atrocities to the Turkish Minister of the Interior, the Turk was puzzled. "Why are you so interested in the Armenians anyway?" Mehmed Talaat asked. "We treat the Americans all right." While it is essential to ensure that Turkey continues to "treat the Americans all right," a stable, fruitful, 21st century relationship cannot be built on a lie.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1672790,00.html

[Alexandros]

The U.S. and Turkey: Honesty Is the Best Policy
Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007 By SAMANTHA POWER

Ninety-two years ago, the "Young Turk" regime ordered the executions of Armenian civic leaders and intellectuals, and Turkish soldiers and militia forced the Armenian population to march into the desert, where more than a million died by bayonet or starvation. That horror helped galvanize Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, to invent the word genocide, which was defined not as the extermination of an entire group but rather as a systematic effort to destroy a group. Lemkin wanted the term — and the international legal convention that grew out of it — to encompass ethnic cleansing and the murdering of a substantial part of a group. Otherwise, he feared, the world would wait until an entire group had been wiped out before taking any action.

But this month in Washington these historical truths — about events carried out on another continent, in another century — are igniting controversy among politicians as if the harms were unsubstantiated, local and recent. At stake, of course, is the question of whether the U.S. House of Representatives should offend Turkey by passing a resolution condemning the "Armenian genocide" of 1915.

All actors in the debate are playing the roles they have played for decades. Turkish General Yasar Buyukanit warned that if the House proceeds with a vote, "our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again." Having recognized the genocide while campaigning for the White House, President George W. Bush nevertheless followed in the footsteps of his Oval Office predecessors, bemoaning the euphemistic "tragic suffering" of Armenians and wheeling out men and women of diplomatic and military rank to argue that the resolution would harm the indispensable U.S.-Turkish relationship. In Congress, Representatives in districts populated by Armenians generally support the measure, while those well cudgeled or coddled by the President or Pentagon don't. Official pressure has led many sponsors of the resolution to withdraw their support.

One feature of the decades-old script is new: the Turkish threats have greater credibility today than in the past. Mainly this is because the U.S. war in Iraq has dramatically increased Turkish leverage over Washington. Some 70% of U.S. air cargo en route to Iraq passes through Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military there. While Turkey may react negatively in the short term, recognition of the genocide is warranted for four reasons. First, the House resolution tells the truth, and the U.S. would be the 24th country to officially acknowledge it. In arguing against the resolution, Bush hasn't dared dispute the facts. An Administration that has shown little regard for the truth is openly urging Congress to join it in avoiding honesty. It is inconceivable that even back in the days when the U.S. prized West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, Washington would have refrained from condemning the Holocaust at Germany's behest.

Second, the passage of time is only going to increase the size of the thorn in the side of what is indeed a valuable relationship with Turkey. Many a U.S. official (and even the occasional senior Turkish official) admits in private to wishing the U.S. had recognized the genocide years ago. Armenian survivors are passing away, but their descendants have vowed to continue the struggle. The vehemence of the Armenian diaspora is increasing, not diminishing. Third, America's leverage over Turkey is far greater than Turkey's over the U.S. The U.S. brought Turkey into NATO, built up its military and backed its membership in the European Union. Washington granted most-favored-nation trading status to Turkey, resulting in some $7 billion in annual trade between the two countries and $2 billion in U.S. investments there. Only Israel and Egypt outrank Turkey as recipients of U.S. foreign assistance. And fourth, for all the help Turkey has given the U.S. concerning Iraq, Ankara turned down Washington's request to use Turkish bases to launch the Iraq invasion, and it ignored Washington's protests by massing 60,000 troops at the Iraq border this month as a prelude to a widely expected attack in Iraqi Kurdistan. In other words, while Turkey may invoke the genocide resolution as grounds for ignoring U.S. wishes, it has a longer history of snubbing Washington when it wants to.

Back in 1915, when Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, protested the atrocities to the Turkish Minister of the Interior, the Turk was puzzled. "Why are you so interested in the Armenians anyway?" Mehmed Talaat asked. "We treat the Americans all right." While it is essential to ensure that Turkey continues to "treat the Americans all right," a stable, fruitful, 21st century relationship cannot be built on a lie.

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...672790,00.html

Well written article by Samantha Power who is a close senior foreign policy advisor to Presidential candidate Barack Obama.