Rep. Adam Schiff, D-CA has introduced a bill (HR 195) asking President Bush to recognize the Armenian genocide.
However, US officials more worried about Turkish feelings than genocide.
Armenian Americans are more insulted by the offensive attitude of the Bush administration toward the Armenian Genocide than they are by Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge it.
LA City Council votes to support Schiff’s resolution.
It’s been a long time coming and it’s a long time overdue. The US government needs to officially realize and recognize the Armenian genocide happened.
I am baffled by this statement. I understand why Schiff has introduced the resolution; his district has more people of Armenian origin in it than any comparable geographic division outside of Aremenia. That’s standard, local politics in America: foreign policy to placate an important local group. But why does the federal government need to acknowledge an historical fact? If it involved something in which we bore consdierably responsibility, like the Pinochet dictatorship or Operation Condor, or Iran of 1953, or Vietnam, or Iraq, or any of a hundred places we’ve screwed up, I could see some reasons for a formal recognition, but as I recall, the US wasn’t involved with the Ottoman Empire in 1915 when the killings occurred. Americans already are insufferably self-righteous with feelings of superiority; I fail to see how the proposed resolution does anything other than encourage such unfortuate tendencies.
It’s for the same reason that countries passed resolutions condemning South Africa for apartheid, to apply pressure on the country to change. Turkey still insists the genocide didn’t happen and you can be jailed for saying it did.
Again, I can understand if there is a current threat–although interference in the internal affairs of other countries, no matter how noxious their regimes are, is at best a slippery slope to be trod on carefully, as the current events in Afghanistan and Iraq should have convinced even the most interventionist of Americans. BUt the Armenian genocide was limited in time to WWI, not an ongoing administration like South Africa was. I have a hard time understanding what the resolutions are attempting to accomplish, other than to satisfy Armenian constituencies and piss off the Turks (which also may satisfy domestic constituencies and which is the bane to a rational foreign policy in the US of A).
Let’s try a thought experiment: are you in favor of a resolution condemning President Admadinejad for his views that the Holocaust never existed? If so, what do you expect to be gained from it? If not, why not? (BTW, there was a particularly delicious interview between Der Spiegel and Ahmadinejab about a year ago where he was pretentiously fawning over the German interviewer with the assumption that the interviewer would respond to his flattery and agree that the Holocaust never occurred, and was shocked to hear the interviewer give him an disbelieving rejoinder that of course the Holocaust occurred and that no one but the neo-Nazis in Germany felt otherwise.
Admadinejad didn’t murder 1.5 million people so why bring him up, especially think he has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
I’m baffled as to why you think recognizing the murder of 1.5 million Armenians isn’t worthy of attention.
Never said a genocide isn’t worthy of attention; I said I didn’t see why a Congressional resolution is appropriate. Keep it in the public eye by all means, but resolutions are meaningless feel-good measures that are best left to city councils and chambers of commerce.
Since you don’t favor a congresisonal resolution against Ahmadinejad for denying the Jewish Holocaust, since he didn’t kill anyone, I assume you’re not upset about the Turks denying the Armenian Holocaust because nobody living today didn’t kill anyone?