HOUSE ARMENIAN "GENOCIDE" VOTE INCREASINGLY SEEN AS POLITICAL TURKEY
By Joe Gandelman
The Moderate Voice
Oct 18 2007
The move to get a vote in the House of Representatives condemning the
killings of Armenians nearly 100 years ago has seemingly hit a big,
fat political snag:
The vote is increasingly being seen as a political and a U.S. national
interest turkey. The Christian Science Monitor:
The sudden misgivings about a popular House resolution condemning
as "genocide" the large-scale killings of Armenians more than nine
decades ago illustrate a recurring tug of war in US foreign policy:
when to take the moral high ground and when to heed the pragmatic
realities of national interests.
The measure, which would put the House of Representatives on record as
characterizing as genocide the deaths of more than 1 million Armenians
at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, appeared on track to passage by
the full House after the Foreign Affairs Committee approved it last
week. But pressure from the White House – worried about the impact of
the nonbinding measure on relations with Turkey, a crucial logistical
partner in the war in Iraq – is now causing Republicans and Democrats
who had supported the measure to reconsider.
This underscores several factors at play.
It’s continuing evidence (among lots of mounting evidence) that even a
"lame duck" White House is a strong duck. It also underscores that
fact that, even amid many political divisions, there is a common
pragmatism among many lawmakers of both parties that causes them to
pause and consider whether a controversial action is indeed in the
long-term national interest. And it also reflects the fact that BOTH
"hawks" and "doves" on Iraq (despite the polemics of talk radio and
many weblogs) don’t want to do anything that will seriously sandbag
the American troops already over there.
"We regularly see the impulse of Wilsonian idealism, the emphasis on
democracy and human rights, counterbalanced by the pragmatic demands
of realpolitik. It’s one of the constant dynamics of American foreign
policy," says Thomas Henriksen, a foreign-policy scholar at the Hoover
Institution in Stanford, Calif. "We want to be the city on the hill,
but then some overriding interests come up and we say, ‘Oh, that’s
different.’ "
In this case, the overriding interest appears to be keeping on good
terms with Turkey, a NATO ally that opposed the war in Iraq but that
allows the United States to use bases there as part of crucial supply
lines to US troops and personnel in Iraq.
The fact that the vote has come up at all has sparked a mini-firestorm
in Turkey, raising the oft-stated theme that the Democrats are
weak when it comes to acting in favor of long-range foreign policy
interests:
Prospects for a full House statement on Armenian genocide have been
feeding nationalist flames in Turkey. The government of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already been battling heavy anti-American
public opinion as it acts to address the problem of recurring attacks
by Kurdish rebels from across the border in Kurdish Iraq.
How quick has the move been to back off from what earlier had seemed
a near-certain vote?
It’s as if a parent unwrapped a toy for her child and suddenly saw
a label that declared: "MADE IN CHINA."
For instance, the New York Times reports:
Support for a House resolution condemning as genocide the mass killings
of Armenians in 1915 continued to weaken today as Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
who only days ago vowed to bring the measure to the floor of the House,
signaled that she may be changing her mind.
"Whether it will come up or not, what the action will be, remains
to be seen," Ms. Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill today. Her
uncertainty stood in sharp contrast to her earlier pledge to bring
the measure to the floor if it emerged from the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, which it did a week ago by 27 to 21.
Worried about antagonizing Turkish leaders, House members from both
parties have been withdrawing their support from the resolution,
which had been backed by the Democratic leadership.
The measure’s prospects were weakened further today when Representative
John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who heads the Appropriations
subcommittee on military matters, spoke out against it.
"What happened nearly 100 years ago was terrible," said Mr. Murtha,
who has urged the speaker not to bring up the resolution for a vote.
"I don’t know whether it was a massacre or a genocide, but that is
beside the point. The point is, we have to deal with today’s world."
And dealing with today’s world means dealing with Turkey,
said Mr. Murtha, long a Democratic leader on national security
issues. "Until we can stop the war in Iraq, I believe it is imperative
to ensure continued access to military installations in Turkey,
which serve U.S. operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
The news cycle hasn’t seen this much media coverage of flip-flopping
since stories about the campaigns of former Massachusetts Governor
Mitt Romney, Arizona Senator John McCain and New York Senator Hillary
Clinton….
President George Bush has been calling for a "no" vote on the
resolution, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s tilting the windmill
back to its regular wind-path.
Meanwhile, there has been some political fallout within Turkey.
According to Bloomberg, ire over this issue coming up in America
has caused some in Turkey’s political establishment to point their
fingers at – you guessed it – the Iranian President’s favorite target:
Turkey’s rage over a U.S. congressional resolution accusing it of
genocide against Armenians nearly a century ago is being felt in
quarters far removed from Washington: its own Jewish community.
Turkish Jews’ concerns for their safety have been fanned by comments
from Foreign Minister Ali Babacan that there’s a perception in
the country that Jews and Armenians "are now hand-in-hand trying to
defame Turkey." Turkey’s complaint: Its usual allies among pro-Israel
U.S. lobbyists didn’t work hard enough to block the resolution.
Even as support for the measure fades in Congress – U.S. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi yesterday backed off her promise to bring it to a floor
vote – it has intensified feelings of vulnerability among Turkey’s
23,000 Jews, who have been subjected to terrorist bombings.
"There have been insinuations that our security and well- being in
Turkey is linked to the fate" of the resolution, Jewish leaders said
in a half-page ad in the Washington Times urging its rejection.
"Public opinion is so emotional on the issue that they seem to
blame everyone who may not have been able to block it," Sami Kohen,
a prominent member of the Jewish community in Istanbul and a columnist
for the Milliyet newspaper, said in an interview. "Some elements –
Islamists and ultranationalists – might use the Jews as a scapegoat
and say they have failed, they have done nothing."
Blaming the Jews – a sport seemingly more popular these days than
American football or European soccer – seems particularly ironic
since a Jewish organization is under fire in the United States now
for not doing ENOUGH to SUPPORT the resolution:
Even as support crumbles in Congress for a resolution recognizing the
World War I-era Armenian genocide, several Massachusetts towns are
still calling on the Anti-Defamation League to clarify its position
on the matter and support the resolution.
This week alone, Lexington and Westwood have suspended their
involvement in a popular ADL antibigotry program, joining four other
communities – Watertown, Newton, Belmont, and Arlington – in protesting
the ADL’s refusal to support the quest for genocide recognition.
Given the fading support for such a resolution in Congress,
Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said he believes
his organization was being wrongly punished by these Massachusetts
communities.
"I don’t think it’s fair," Foxman told the Globe yesterday.
Still, local Armenian-Americans and the town officials who have voted
to pull out of the ADL’s No Place For Hate program said they will
continue to pressure the ADL to specifically acknowledge the mass
killings as genocide no matter what Congress does. .
"The issue was not a political issue; the issue was a human rights
issue," said Marianne Ferguson, explaining why Newton’s Human Rights
Commission, which she chairs, voted to pull out of the ADL antibigotry
program last month. "And to deny a history, and deny that it happened,
to say, ‘Not so’ – you can’t do that and say you’re a human rights
organization."
Meanwhile, the debate in the U.S. news media continues. Dr. Michael
A. Moodian, of Chapman University, has an op-ed piece in the Los
Angeles Daily News which begins:
FROM 1915 to 1917, it is estimated that nearly 1.5 million Armenians
were killed by the Ottoman Empire in one of the greatest systematic
massacres in the history of modern civilization. Today, over 20
countries, including Russia, Canada, Greece, Italy and Poland,
formally recognize the atrocious events at the start of the 20th
century as a genocide.
However, last Wednesday, the Bush administration – in a direct insult
to the people of Armenia and hundreds of thousands Armenian Americans
– urged the House of Representatives not to support a resolution
sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, in which the United States
would officially recognize the event as a genocide. Bush cited a
potential strain in relations with Turkey.
Could there be a greater hypocrisy? On one hand, the administration
says that we are engaged in a war to liberate the Iraqi people from
a recent history of large-scale massacres from the Saddam Hussein
regime, yet we will do so by disregarding historical crimes against
humanity by our key ally in the Middle East?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines genocide as "the systematic
and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political or
ethnic group." However, though Bush acknowledges the tragedy of the
mass killings during the World War I era, he fears losing a geographic
ally in the supposed "war against terror." How keen of him.
Read it all because it highlights again the tug-of-war between taking
a moral stand and taking a position perceived as being in the best
national interest.
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