Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City)
October 18, 2007 Thursday
Genocide resolution is just irresponsible politics by Democrats
by Thomas Sowell
With all the problems facing this country, both in Iraq and at home,
why is Congress spending time trying to pass a resolution condemning
the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago?
Make no mistake about it, that massacre of hundreds of thousands —
perhaps a million or more — Armenians was one of the worst
atrocities in all of history.
As with the later Holocaust against the Jews, it was not considered
sufficient to kill innocent victims. They were first put through
soul-scarring dehumanization in whatever sadistic ways occurred to
those who carried out these atrocities.
Historians need to make us aware of such things. But why are
politicians suddenly trying to pass congressional resolutions about
these events, long after all those involved are dead and after the
Ottoman Empire in which all these things happened no longer exists?
The short answer is irresponsible politics.
People of Armenian ancestry in the United States and around the world
are justifiably outraged at what happened in the Ottoman Empire —
and at subsequent governments in Turkey that have refused to
acknowledge or accept historical responsibility for the mass
atrocities that took place on their soil.
But the sudden interest of congressional Democrats in this issue goes
beyond trying to pick up some votes.
They want a resolution to condemn what happened as "genocide" — a
word that provokes instant anger among today’s Turks, since genocide
means a deliberate government policy aimed at exterminating a whole
people, as distinguished from horrors growing out of a widespread
breakdown of law and order in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
These are issues of historical facts and semantics best left to
scholars rather than politicians.
If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution
accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq
war?
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the
latest in a series of congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct
of that war.
Large numbers of American troops and vast amounts of military
equipment go to Iraq through Turkey, one of the few nations in the
Islamic Middle East that has long been an American ally.
Turkey has also thus far refrained from retaliating against guerrilla
attacks from the Kurdish regions of Iraq onto Turkish soil. But the
Turks could retaliate big time if they chose.
There are more Turkish troops on the border of Iraq than there are
American troops within Iraq.
Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington to show
its displeasure over Congress’ raising this issue. The Turks may or
may not stop at that.
In this touchy situation, why stir up a hornet’s nest over something
in the past that neither we nor anybody else can do anything about
today?
Japan has yet to acknowledge its atrocities from World War II. Yet
the Congress of the United States does not try to make worldwide
pariahs of today’s Japanese, most of whom were not even born when
those atrocities occurred.
Even fewer, if any, Turks who took part in attacks on Armenians
during World War I are likely to still be alive.
Too many Democrats in Congress have gotten into the habit of treating
the Iraq war as President Bush’s war — and therefore fair game for
political tactics making it harder for him to conduct that war.
In a rare but revealing slip, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn
said that an American victory in Iraq "would be a real big problem
for us" in the 2008 elections.
Unwilling to take responsibility for ending the war by cutting off
the money to fight it, as many of their supporters want them to,
congressional Democrats have instead tried to sabotage the prospects
of victory by seeking to micromanage the deployment of troops,
delaying the passing of appropriations — and now this genocide
resolution that is the latest, and perhaps lowest, of these tactics.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University.