Who Remembers Now the Destruction of the Armenians?
David Weigel | August 28, 2007, 11:39am
Jamie Kirchick is making sense about the Anti-Defamation League's stonewalling on a Congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide:
For pragmatic reasons, a sense of the Congress resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide may not be such a great idea. Turkey is an important ally in the Muslim world. Would it really be worth hurting that relationship over a resolution that, however morally just, bears no force? A few weeks ago, however, a legislator told me that if such a resolution really did offend the Turks to the point that they would hamper American military maneuvers out of Incirlik Air Base or by fooling around in Kurdistan, then maybe our relationship with Turkey is not all it's cracked up to be in the first place.
But at the end of the day, these realpolitik considerations should have no bearing on a civic organization committed to humanitarian goals, which is what the ADL claims to be. Yes, it is part of the ADL's mission to defend Israel (and, it bears noting, to debunk Holocaust deniers)--but the ADL is not a mere extension of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Pussyfooting on the existence of the Armenian genocide works against everything for which the ADL claims to stand.
Incredibly ironic, too, as the title of this post is a much-repeated
paraphrase of Hitler's August 22, 1939 speech. Hitler's point was that founders of great empires are remembered for the kingdoms they build and not the people they slaughter. He was, unsurprisingly, wrong as all hell, evidenced by the other example he gave: "history sees in [Genghis Khan] solely the founder of a state." (The Reich didn't last long enough for him to witness John Kerry's Senate testimony or
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.) How the ADL expects people to remain concerned about genocide while forgetting or blowing off a fairly recent genocide, I have no clue.
I've got nothing else to add to Kirchick: Either the ADL is an organization that dogpiles people who minimize genocides or Nazism or it's an extension of Ehud Olmert's press shop.
And yes, I realize I just quoted Hitler to make a point. If Abe Foxman wants to sue me, the subpoena should be sent to
reason's Washington, D.C. office between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. any day this week.
Kevork Kalayjian | August 30, 2007, 5:14pm | #
Dear Madam Secretary Condoleezza Rice:
Your comments during U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations hearings (Wednesday, March 21, 2007), on the issue of the Armenian Genocide are insulting, racist, and void of decency.
According to your remarks the United States should not be involved in a dispute between Turkey and Armenia over whether the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians almost a century ago constituted genocide.
The Armenian Genocide is an American human rights issue, not a dispute between two distant countries. Just as slavery was and still is an American human rights issue not a dispute between Nigeria or any other African state and Great Britain.
The present day Republic of Armenia, and the Republic of Nagorno Karapakh, have little concern about the Armenian Genocide because they are the only provinces of historic Armenia which were able to defend themselves against continuous Turkish aggressions, and maintain their independence against the harshest odds. These Republics and their neighboring Turkish states do have many issues which have a better chance of being resolved once the United States properly acknowledges the Armenian Genocide.
It is I, and millions of Americans of Armenian descent like me, who lost their ancestral homeland, and found refuge in this great country, it is us that were promised to have our homes back by President Woodrow Wilson, it is us who want you to honor our history and our rights as human beings.
If all Americans adopted your racist attitude about human rights issues probably you would still have been a slave now. After reading your comments I wonder which is worse, the physical enslavement of people, or the enslavement of the mind which leads to the moral prostitution of the American constitution and all the values that it stands for in the hands of this administration.
Your comments are equally insulting and degrading to Turkish Americans and citizens of Turkey who are working to introduce a true democracy in that country, so that it can be integrated into the European Union. True democratic values and traditions are trampled over and destroyed in Turkey by our desire to accommodate bases for our troops, airfields for our warplanes, and contracts for our multinational corporations.
Finally, how would you feel if our past secretary of states told Dr. Martin Luther King and all the civil rights advocates “I think that these historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians and what we’ve encouraged the ‘Slave Traders’ and the ‘Negroes’ to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past and, in examining their past, to get over their past”. I took the liberty to replace ‘Turks’ and the ‘Armenians’ with my example, but you can replace with other pairs, such as: Germans and the Jews, Serbs and Kosovars, Americans and Natives, etc.
Thank God that we still have courageous lawmakers on both sides of the isle to question your reasoning on this issue. Your choice of words “I come out of academia, but I’m secretary of state now,” I suppose this is meant to say that you used to be a decent human being when you were in academia, but now that you work for this administration you have to leave moral courage, decency, and common sense behind you.
May God give you the wisdom to do the right thing.
Sincerely,
Kevork K. Kalayjian, Jr.
