Robert Fisk: Holocaust denial in the White House
The Turks say the Armenians died in a ‘civil war’, and Bush goes along
with their lies
The Independent/UK
Published: 10 November 2007
How are the mighty fallen! President George Bush, the crusader king who
would draw the sword against the forces of Darkness and Evil, he who
said there was only "them or us", who would carry on, he claimed, an
eternal conflict against "world terror" on our behalf; he turns out,
well, to be a wimp. A clutch of Turkish generals and a
multimillion-dollar public relations campaign on behalf of Turkish
Holocaust deniers have transformed the lion into a lamb. No, not even a
lamb ` for this animal is, by its nature, a symbol of innocence ` but
into a household mouse, a little diminutive creature which, seen from
afar, can even be confused with a rat. Am I going too far? I think not.
The "story so far" is familiar enough. In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish
authorities carried out the systematic genocide of one and a half
million Christian Armenians. There are photographs, diplomatic reports,
original Ottoman documentation, the process of an entire post-First
World War Ottoman trial, Winston Churchill and Lloyd George and a
massive report by the British Foreign Office in 1915 and 1916 to prove
that it is all true. Even movie film is now emerging ` real archive
footage taken by Western military cameramen in the First World War ` to
show that the first Holocaust of the 20th century, perpetrated in front
of German officers who would later perfect its methods in their
extermination of six million Jews, was as real as its pitifully few
Armenian survivors still claim.
But the Turks won’t let us say this. They have blackmailed the Western
powers ` including our own British Government, and now even the US ` to
kowtow to their shameless denials. These (and I weary that we must
repeat them, because every news agency and government does just that
through fear of Ankara’s fury) include the canard that the Armenians
died in a "civil war", that they were anyway collaborating with
Turkey’s Russian enemies, that fewer Armenians were killed than have
been claimed, that as many Turkish Muslims were murdered as Armenians.
And now President Bush and the United States Congress have gone along
with these lies. There was, briefly, a historic moment for Bush to walk
tall after the US House Foreign Relations Committee voted last month to
condemn the mass slaughter of Armenians as an act of genocide. Ancient
Armenian-American survivors gathered at a House panel to listen to the
debate. But as soon as Turkey’s fossilised generals started to threaten
Bush, I knew he would give in.
Listen, first, to General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the Turkish armed
forces, in an interview with the newspaper Milliyet. The passage of the
House resolution, he whinged, was "sad and sorrowful" in view of the
"strong links" Turkey maintained with its Nato partners. And if this
resolution was passed by the full House of Representatives, then "our
military relations with the US would never be as they were in the
past… The US, in that respect, has shot itself in the foot".
Now listen to Mr Bush as he snaps to attention before the Turkish
general staff. "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering (sic) of the
Armenian people… But this resolution is not the right response to
these historic mass killings. Its passage would do great harm to our
relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror." I
loved the last bit about the "global war on terror". Nobody ` save for
the Jews of Europe ` has suffered "terror" more than the benighted
Armenians of Turkey in 1915. But that Nato should matter more than the
integrity of history ` that Nato might one day prove to be so important
that the Bushes of this world may have to equivocate over the Jewish
Holocaust to placate a militarily resurgent Germany ` beggars belief.
Among those men who should hold their heads in shame are those who
claim they are winning the war in Iraq. They include the increasingly
disoriented General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, and the
increasingly delusional US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, both of
whom warned that full passage of the Armenian genocide bill would "harm
the war effort in Iraq". And make no mistake, there are big bucks
behind this disgusting piece of Holocaust denial.
Former Representative Robert L Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, has
already picked up $12m from the Turks for his company, the Livingston
Group, for two previously successful attempts to pervert the cause of
moral justice and smother genocide congressional resolutions. He
personally escorted Turkish officials to Capitol Hill to threaten US
congressmen. They got the point. If the resolution went ahead, Turkey
would bar US access to the Incirlik airbase through which passed much
of the 70 per cent of American air supplies to Iraq which transit
Turkey.
In the real world, this is called blackmail ` which was why Bush was
bound to cave in. Defence Secretary Robert Gates was even more
pusillanimous ` although he obviously cared nothing for the details of
history. Petraeus and Crocker, he said, "believe clearly that access to
the airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would be very much
put at risk if this resolution passes…".
How terrible an irony did Gates utter. For it is these very "roads and
so on" down which walked the hundreds of thousands of Armenians on
their 1915 death marches. Many were forced aboard cattle trains which
took them to their deaths. One of the railway lines on which they
travelled ran due east of Adana ` a great collection point for the
doomed Christians of western Armenia ` and the first station on the
line was called Incirlik, the very same Incirlik which now houses the
huge airbase that Mr Bush is so frightened of losing.
Had the genocide that Bush refuses to acknowledge not taken place ` as
the Turks claim ` the Americans would be asking the Armenians for
permission to use Incirlik. There is still alive ` in Sussex if anyone
cares to see her ` an ageing Armenian survivor from that region who
recalls the Ottoman Turkish gendarmes setting fire to a pile of living
Armenian babies on the road close to Adana. These are the same "roads
and so on" that so concern the gutless Mr Gates.
But fear not. If Turkey has frightened the boots off Bush, he’s still
ready to rattle the cage of the all-powerful Persians. People should be
interested in preventing Iran from acquiring the knowledge to make
nuclear weapons if they’re "interested in preventing World War Three",
Bush has warned us. What piffle. Bush can’t even summon up the courage
to tell the truth about World War One.
Who would have thought that the leader of the Western world ` he who
would protect us against "world terror" ` would turn out to be the
David Irving of the White House?