Watch as Jim Henley uses history to prove that he hates America:
Absent a terrorist assault on Turkish territory from within an American protectorate, the resolution would be merely galling. Barely 20 years before the 1915-17 ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Armenians, the US was still wrapping up its own comprehensive forced march of its indigenous enemies. The spectacular arrogance of the Armenian genocide resolution would probably be a transitory offense, one more in a long example of America’s “do as we say, not as we do” pedagogy to the world. The bizarre notion that the American government has to render judgment on every historical event would still count as a warning, to pretty much everyone, but not necessarily a pressing one.
When will the leftist assaults on this country stop? I bet he only wrote that because he hates Bush.
Zifnab
Andrew Jackson was worse!
And, of course, the epic joke here is that America feels it has a moral obligation to carpet bomb a country into a Democracy (under a Republican President), but shouldn’t feel a moral obligation to comment on genocide committed 80 years ago because, you know, who the hell do we think we are?
Mr. M'Choakumchild
It starts with the Pequot in 1637, and continues to parts of New Orleans in 2005. There are many good reasons to be critical of Turkey, but as a Yank I think we would do well to shut up on the subject of genocides from 80 years ago.
demimondian
There’s a difference, John — we have acknowledged that we committed genocide against the Indians. In our schools, our children are taught that the Trail of Tears was a war crime. Yes, many of those who oppose this resolution do so because they don’t want us to acknowledge those crimes, calling that “political correctness”…but the rest of the country disagrees on that, too.
Dennis-SGMM
It’d be funny if the Turkish parliament passed a resolution condemning America’s genocide of Native Americans. The screams of outrage from both sides of the aisle would be loud enough to kill birds in flight.
Zifnab
On the contrary, if Turkey wants to turn around and rub the massacre of the Cherokee or the Hopi or whomever in our faces, then I say bring it on. Let’s hash this out and agree on exactly what genocide is. Then we’ll go back and make amends to those we offended and they can go back and make amends to their own. That’s how you reconcil the crimes of your forefathers, not by sweeping the travesties under the rug and pretending they never happened because you’ve got skeletons your closet that you don’t want anyone talking about.
Imagine, 100 years from now, a future Congress demanding that Sudan acknowledge the genocide in Darfur. Imagine some winger sloths claiming “Iraq was a genocide too, we shouldn’t be allowed to say anything!” What foolishness.
Potato Head
I don’t understand the widespread derision left and right about this resolution. It wasn’t so long ago that a world leader who denied the Holocaust was obliged to suffer ridicule and condemnation; anyone who didn’t line up to throw stones at him as an accomplice in denialism. Yet here we have an entire fucking country that has officially denied its role in what is by historical consensus the “First Holocaust” (Robert Fisk), on which the Nazis openly modeled their later extermination campaign:
When I first wrote about the Armenian massacres in 1993, The Turks denounced my article–as they have countless books and investigations before and since–as a lie. … If Armenians were killed–and I noted the “If” bit–this was a result of the anarchy that existed in Ottoman Turkey in the First World War… The evidence of European commissions into the massacres, the eyewitness accounts…, teh denunications of Morgenthau and Churchill, were all dismissed as propaganda. (“The Great War for Civilization” (p. 337)
One notes in passing, too, the steadfast opposition of Israel and its chorus in the United States, for whom the “Holocaust(TM)” is their intellectual property, to recognition of the Armenian genocide, too. I guess some victims are more worthwhile then others.
Potato Head
…Last two sentences of blockquote above are mine, not Fisk’s.
Elvis Elvisberg
Absolutely. If they didn’t have such a complex about the West looking down on them, they’d do exactly that instead of flipping out. Maybe throw something in there about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too, just to be sure to piss us off.
What is the purpose of this resolution? If it’s designed to make Turkey less inclined to deal with its past and less inclined to do things to help the US, well, mission accomplished.
Jon H
Henley has GDS. Grant Derangement Syndrome
Dreggas
I have to agree with demi John. They really don’t sugar coat what happened to Native Americans in the History classes, yet another reason why school supposedly has a liberal bias according to my father.
We learned early and often just what a shitty bunch of rat bastards a lot of our ancestors were to the Natives here and even more so down in South America (you want to see fucked up look at what the spanish did there).
capelza
Thing is, we still, for the most part treat Native Americans like crap. There is resentment for their casinos (while gambling in them) and the “drunk Indian” jokes still flow freely. Reservation life is far from paradise. While legally they have a special status, in reality for the most part they are treated as second class citiznes or viewed with resentment as the “other” because they have in a few cases more “rights” (hey, we couldn’t break ALL the treaties…damn those liberal judges).
I spend a lot of time with Native Americans and my stepfather is is a registered tribal, twice over.
Would the Armenians be satisified with a recognition? Or do they want to break away from Turkey and Join Armenia? Do they want reparations from the Republic of Turkey for what happened under a different country or regime? If that were the case, then Turkey may have “realpolitick” reasons for not wanting it seen as genocide.
Personally I think they should just say, yeah…the Ottomans did that…and held trials in 1919 becuase of it.
Dreggas
capelza,
Don’t get me wrong. I fully agree that the Native Americans are getting fucked over still and honestly I cheer each new casino they open. They’re doing for themselves and giving us the finger at the same time, bravo to them.
jcricket
They’re just trying to earn back all the money we stole from them, one sucker at a time :-)
Michigander
There’s never a convenient time to do something that’s difficult. If things were copasetic in the middle east, genocide deniers would be screaming, “don’t alter the balance! Don’t do anything to tip the boat!”
pharniel
here’s the deal.
back in the day, turkey would go apaleptic, and a copetent state department would wander over to the turkish embassy and say “what the fuck bitches. what do you *really* want?” and turkey would be like “yo, pkk gots ta go. reign in your thugs or we bust caps motherfucker”
and state and turkey would work something out, and lo, turkey would say ‘that was the ottomans, we’re better than them”‘ and congress would do whatever the fuck.
i mean. let’s look at this.
the proposal was bieng *TALKED* about. not voted on, not even out on the floor, but *TAKLED* about and turkey goes ape shit.
the same thing comes up every eyar. obviously turkey wants something bad, and wants us to do it.
someone at state should have broken it down for them:
1) STFU our house can do whatever it wants for internal issues, this resolution comes up every year, wtf mate
2) WTF do you really want?
BIRDZILLA
It used to be called the ottoman empire but is colapsts after WW I and the turks lost plenty of territory