U.S. Ambassador to Armenia fired for referring to Armenian genocide

How interesting. A diplomat does *not* have the freedom of speech IF that speech includes being honest about atrocities. Our admin needs a real sound *thump* on the head for that one. If it were possible our founding fathers would be rolling in their graves.

I sent this letter (via email) to President Bush on January 2, 2005 (president@whitehouse.gov)

Dear Sir:

“The twentieth century was marred by wars of unimaginable brutality, mass murder and genocide. History records that the Armenians were the first people of the last century to have endured these cruelties. The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people."

George W. Bush, February 19, 2000

With all due respect, I don't think candidate Bush was referring to a then potential second term or perhaps a poster in the subsequent George W. Bush Presidential Library. In less than 19 days you will have let these people down.

Please don't do that. The date to commerate is April 24, 1915. Ninety years.

Your supporter and fellow Republican,
XXXXXXXXXX

Of course, I got no response.

"How interesting. A diplomat does *not* have the freedom of speech IF that speech includes being honest about atrocities"

Absolutely not. The British ambassodor to Uzbekistan was fired for speaking out against the atrocties commited by President Karimov , not 90 years ago, but now. Karimov is of course Bush and Blairs friend :an absolute dictator who brokes no opposition, man who boils alive his opponenents and slaughters hundreds of protestors - yet another example of the support America gives to democracy and democratically elected leaders in the Muslim world !!

The ambassador could have back-pedalled thus:

"The Turks (and their allies during the cover of the chaos of WW I) were not trying to kill ALL Armenians.

I'm sure they intended to keep one alive for educational purposes.

So technically, it can't be called a "genocide".

Only an effort to kill a hell of a lot of people.

Who just happened to be Armenian."

The army is full of officers and men who, even if they once were sturdily willing to do what they saw as their duty, after their second or third tour in Iraq have come away, despite their best efforts at times to remain quiet about it, disgusted with the waste and the stupidity of the effort, and full of justified loathing not only for the Sunni insurgents, or the Mahdi army boys, but also for so many in the general population who clearly are collaborating with those trying to kill the Americans, and who do so little, so unwillingly, to defend their own "Iraq." So as the army becomes demoralized, and people who have not realized that the Adminstration did not commit a few "mistakes" in the execution of the war, but misconceived the war as "a war on terror" (rather than a war of self-defense against Islam, so that no Muslim state can be permitted to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq was, despite all this "secularist" business, a Muslim state, its not unrepresentative regime infused with the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam, in the version that we all "Pan-Arabism."

And just as many of the best young officrs leave, and soldiers do not re-enlist, and the recruitment standards are dangerously lowered, and those who signed up for the Reserves or the National Guard in a burst of patriotism in 2002 and 2003 are disgusted by the behavior of so many of the generals who "do not get it" and keep prating about "winning hearts and minds" in Iraq, or Afghanistan, and are afraid to state clearly that not only did the Administration fail to identify the enemy, even synecdochically (using the word "Jihad" to stand in for "Islam"), it also got Iraq entirely wrong. By miscomprehending the depth of the Shi'a resentment of Sunnis, that is not merely a result of Saddam Hussein, nor of the past 50 years (i.e., since the coup that overthrew the monarchy and Nuri as-Said) of Iraq's history, but of 1300 years of Sunnis and Shi'a being at each other's throats, and failing as well to realize that the Sunni Arabs will never reconcile themselves, whether in or out of Iraq, to the Land of the Two Rivers being dominated by Sunnis, and will never be disabused of their crazed conviction that they constitute 42% and not 19% of the population, the Administration keeps chasing the will-o'-the-wisp of an "Iraqi" army and an "Iraqi" police force. It risks the lives of American soldiers who are told to train those "Iraqi" forces and even be embedded with them. But the notion that Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs, and Arabs and Kurds, could fight in a cohesive unit, trusting one another with their lives, is nonsense. And to have a few Americans there, who themselves have no ability to detect the Muslim they can trust from the one they can't, and certainly cannot know which Sunni Arab will suddenly turn on his Shi'a fellows, or vice-versa, or both, at different times, on the American whom equally they detest -- this is making officers and men sacrifice, possibly their live,s on the altar of Administration stupidity, timidity, cupidity, obstinate refusal to see how wrong it is -- 180 degrees wrong - by failing to exploit, and trying instead to heal, those ethnic and sectarian fissures.

And now, above, we see that the same madness is reflected in the State Department. Had Ambassador Evans not been forced to apologize for speaking the truth, had he not been forced to resign, had Turkish protests been met with steely indifference, it would have been good for Americdan relations with Turkey, which must in any number of ways be made to realize that the series of events that have demonstrated that Turkey is not the ally the United States thought it was, in its refusal to allow the fourth division to enter Iraq from bases in Turkey, in the disgusting remarks of an important Turksih official declaring American soldiers in Iraq "worse than Nazis," in the Turkish film that became a box-office smash depicting those soldiers as Nazis (and with a Jewish doctor who harvests organs from Iraqis supposedly murdered at Abu Ghraib prison), with the best-sellerdom of "Mein Kampf" in Turkey -- all of this shows that the Turkey of the Ankara generals (it just a few years ago that both Douglas Feith and Richard Perle were registered agents of Turkey) is a thing of the past under Erdogan. Kemalism is transient; Islam is forever. That is the lesson of Turkey. And if Islam is not bound hand and foot, as Ataturk tried to do, it will keep coming back, like Rasputin.

It was important to signal to both Armenia and Turkey that the genocide would be called what it is. It was important for Ambassador Evans to be celebrated. It was even more important to begin to tell the Turkish government and people that they have to face up to this history, and in so doing, they should put the blame right where it belongs: not on some fault inherent in Turks, but in Islam which made Muslim Turks willing to massacre Christian Armenians. In that way, secularist Turks can claim that in taming or distancing themselves from Islam, they have tried to tame the ideological source for those mass murders in1894-96 and then the later genocide (in its intent and scope, by many of those involved) from 1915-1920.

In the State Department, among the decent, there must be dismay. And at the European desks, alarm at how the islamization of Europe proceeds without any signalling from the American government that it understands this problem, that NATO must meet (without Turkey) to discuss this matter, that it cannot wait.

Dismay among the soldiers. Dismay among the diplomats.

And fury, absolute fury, among the American people who watch the idiocy continue.

Hear no evil,see no evil appears to be the motto of the state Department that prides itself in trying not to make waves about such past histories. The politically correct crowd of career government employees is alive and well in the state department. There efforts to maintain a peaceful world is to smooth (cover up) past grievances, and immoral transgressions no matter how hideous they may be.

Left wing professors like Juan Cole at the University of Michigan would probably be right at home in the bastions of the departments thinking. They might subscribe to those Quranic versus Quran 25:63,28:55,5:82,4:90,or 4:94 that do reflect peaceful sayings and ignore hundreds of others that do not.

Read this Comment by Professor Cole in March of this year:

"Bush has spent so much time fulminating against shadowy and sinister forces over there somewhere, he has spooked the American public and members of his own party.

The Big Lie eventually catches up with you.

The hatemongers are well known. Rupert Murdoch's Fox Cable News, Rush Limbaugh's radio program and its many clones, telebimbos like Ann Coulter, Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Congressmen like Tom Tancredo, and a slew of far rightwing Zionists who would vote for Netanyahu (or Kach) if they lived in Israel-- Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, David Horowitz, etc., etc. And finally, there are many Muslims who have an interest in whipping up anti-Islamic feeling. Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress helped maneuver the US into a war against Iraq with lies about a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection and illusory WMD. The dissident Islamic Marxist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is now placing equally false stories about Iran in the Western press and retailing them to Congress and the Pentagon.

The hatemongers think that the American public is sort of like a big stupid dog, and you can fairly easily "sic" it on whoever you like. Just tell them that X people are intrinsically evil and that the US needs to go to war to protect itself from them. Then they turn around and blame those of us who don't want our country reduced to footsoldiers in someone else's greedy crusade for being "unpatriotic."

Professor Juan Cole

Yes all us right wingers are intentionally trying to promote divisiveness between Islam and the western world religions, yes we are trying to undermine the peaceful religion of Islam.

The comments made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are made up or mistranslated.

Khomeini was misunderstood,antisemitism was misunderstood, and even 9-11,the USS Cole, Khobar towers, and over 8,000 other terrorist attacks around the world are misunderstood when it comes to the religon of peace.

What the hell, swing wide the borders, let 'em all in, fire the people who will stand up for right. What is it the elite want for us? Looks like they want the end of our nation and freedom. All those conspiracy theories are looking less ridiculous all the time.

"And fury, absolute fury, among the American people who watch the idiocy continue."

Yes, that fury is so loud you can hear a cough drop.

Fury can slowly grow within people, yet they can remain silent, because the right words have not presented themselves to their minds or they do not realize that they are not alone, or the fury is misdirected or internalized or deliberately suppressed. Bujt it can grow, and eventually, if the right words and right instruments to express that fury are found, it will be expressed. Here, and in Europe. Despite the best efforts of those who rule over us, and who have been criminally negligent in their own study, and understanding, of the matter.

Mackie, this 'professor' cole suffers from 'pat buchannan' syndrome, characterized by a deep-seeded jealousy/hatred of Jewish people that so overwhelms the psyche as to impair rational thought. Makes even a person with somewhat above-average intelligence come off sounding like a babbling fool. I would not take anything he writes seriously, and would certainly discourage young people from subjecting themselves to his classroom diatribes. Let Yale hire him, so he can 'teach' the Yale talibani and his co-cultists.

How disgusting is this. Throw the bums out. This is the first step. The conservative base will not vote for the country club set, go along, get along mentality of coddling the Turks. They will sit home.

Too bad, some news outfit like 60 minutes or 20-20 will not interview this Amb. They like to discredit W anyway, what a better mechanism. Have Mike Wallace do a swan song, running after Condi, "Mike Wallace, 60 minutes, Dr. Rice, are you in favor if dhimmitude? Did Armenians die in mass murder, by Turks? Was the Amb. Wrong." I know . . . I won't hold my breath for this to occur.

This silencing of this Amb. is dhimmitude at its worst. Pathetic.

This is a key example as to why we in the west are doomed. Our only hope for a little clarity on how desperate our survival is lies directly in the hands of the U.S. government.

However, as it shows time and time again, it doesn't matter what you do as long as you are a friend of the U.S. you can do anything. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc. These are probably the biggest violaters in the world, but they're buddies with whatever administration seems to be in place.

The Armenian Genocide was Adolf Hitlers blue print for his Genocide against the Jews. The reported possible use of identifying clothing the Iranians are referring to, are not a Nazi invention, they are past practice in the muslim world.

Why does Great Britain always push so hard for Turkey's admission into the EU? Pressure from the US. Talk to anyone in Europe, my relatives in Greece always state that it's the U.S. pushing for their admission. My only question is why? Do the administrations of the U.S. not realize they are pushing for the utter annhialation of Europe?

It is time for people to pull together and start some anti Islam protests, and start telling people what's at stake in public forums. Our world leaders are asleep at the wheel and our public in North America is grossly uninformed.

Sorry folks the end of our world as we know it is coming. It won't be in my time but it will be in my kids time and I do lose sleep over it.

Winston Churchill could almost have been referring to folks like Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and those 60 other members of Congress when he said this:

"The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians....Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told."

Swap "England" for "America", and it rings so true.

Totally O/T - but I read through some old JW threads from various links today and I was wondering -

Profitsbeard - did you previously post under the moniker "BigSleep"?

Hugh: "Fury can slowly grow within people, yet they can remain silent, because the right words have not presented themselves to their minds.."

Thank you for succintly explaining the reasons for all my missing posts on this forum.

I have too often been struck dumb. Literally...

Hugh-

In the middle of your second paragraph in your first posting I think you mean "dominated by Shi'ites", not Sunnis.

Caroline-

Yes.

Tried to get a little jab in at the common somnambulism of the p.c. populace with that monicker (title of one of my favorite books, also), but reverted to 'profit's beard" since Islam itself is Mohammad's "beard" (in the sense meant when someone little Rock Hudson 'married' the secretary of his manager as a cover for his real sexual orientation, or, as a "beard") allowing the pedophile to reap endless "profits" from his puppet-like manipulation of Allah's sleazy proclamations, which excused every level of indecency and immorality that Mo desired, from plundering innocent caravans, assassinating women poets who mocked him, or forcing a younger male relative to divorce a good-looking lady so that Mo could then take the fellow's wife as his own.

"...like litte Rock..." above.

(The pun loses something without the "like".)

How typical that diplomacy trumps truth when it comes to maintaining ties with alleged allies. I say alleged for Turkey would turn on America in a heart beat if it served Turkish interests.

Disgusting. Thank you Bush for being a PC nazi like your friends in the Democratic party. It goes to show it doesnt matter who gets elected their all the same.

Among the reasons the Muslim Council of Britain gave for boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day back in 2001 was that it included "the controversial question of [the]alleged Armenian genocide" (while not mentioning the 'genocides' in Palestine and Kashmir!). It seems it's not just the Turks who insist, absurdly, on pretending the crime never took place: the representatives of Britain's Muslims also want to take part in the pantomime.

This US-administration needs to go into receivership. They Bush-Rice combo is mentally and morally totally bankrupt.

Another context, but an excerpt from Dr. A. Carlebach nevertheless fits nicely:

...one can justify this or that side--and such a presentation, sophisticated and political, of the problem is understandable for European minds--at our expense.
The Arabs raise claims that make sense to the Western understanding of simple legal dispute. But in reality, who knows better than us that such is not the source of their hostile stand? All those political and social concepts are never theirs.

Occupation by force of arms, in their own eyes, in the eyes of Islam, is not at all associated with injustice. To the contrary, it constitutes a certificate and demonstration of authentic ownership.

PB . Thanks for responding. You're quite the old-timer then. A good time for me to note that I very much enjoy the quirky philosophical style of your posts, immediately recognizable whatever the moniker:-)

That the United States government has adopted a policy of "holocaust denial" in regard to the Armenians is absolutely shameful. It also shows how strong the Turkish and Islamic lobbies are in Washington DC.

Unfortunately, this denial of historic facts is not limited to the United States. Even the Israeli foriegn ministry officially denies the Armenian genocide in order to maintain cozy relations with the regime in Ankara. Contrast this with Syria, where the high school textbooks have a whole section on the Turkish genocide against the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Alawites. They even quote Hitler's justification for the holocaust "Who remembers the Armenians?"

It is a very sad reflection on the US when the Ba'athist dictatorship in Syria is more historically honest than our own state department.

Caroline-

Bingo on the lingo!

(A cactus by any other name is still as prickly.)

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." -Byron.

"(A cactus by any other name is still as prickly.)"

And PB is certainly a step up from BS, however you slice it:-)

Spirit of 1683 said

Winston Churchill could almost have been referring to folks like Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and those 60 other members of Congress

Just to be clear, it was Condoleezza Rice and the State Department that recalled the Ambassador, and it was Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and the 60 other members of Congress who were doing the right thing by speaking out against it.

This was another small case of people (like Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)) starting to speak out against dhimmitude and the jihad. Hugh is right, the murmers are growing louder.

Who's in charge of firing the head Bozo's in Foggy Bottom?

If you think diplomats have freedom of speech, ask anyone who worked for US Amb. Jean Kennedy Smith in Ireland about the consequences of telling the truth about IRA terrorism.

But seriously now, following the present situation and near future, who is there that can be voted the next president of the U.S.A.?

Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). and the Armenian people need to do more to educate and scream about this code of silence over this genocide. l believe the Cdn PM Harper mentioned about the Armeenian genocide and was promptly called for it by the muslim and leftist elites in Canada.

cosmicAvenger: "But seriously now, following the present situation and near future, who is there that can be voted the next president of the U.S.A.?"

OK - sticking my neck out on the chopping block here - but what about Newt Gingrich? Pros? Cons?

Here is what Paul Harvey would say is the REST of the story: Armenian Genocide.

What has always puzzled me is how little people like us line dancing', beer guzzlin' NASCAR and NFL fans can fully comprehend this truth and at the same time PhD presidential cabinet members on down to every member of the most recent crop of Georgetown School of Foreign Service graduates can remain so clueless.

Instead of spoonfeeding Esposito's Saudi funded pablum to the impressionable young would-be FSOs at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, I suggest that they take their students on a day trip to the National Archives to simply stare at the Declaration of Independence, because We the People still believe in that stuff, especially these bits:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Caroline-

LOL

PB without the UH, of course. (PBUH)

Have a good Memorial Weekend.

"The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage."

-Thucydides.

(Off to freely fling some frisbees and footballs with nieces and nephews ...in the direction of Mecca, maybe.)

Sorry special_guest, I misread this piece, but Churchills words from 1933 apply to far too many politicians and other academics throughout the Wesrtern world.

"Contrast this with Syria, where the high school textbooks have a whole section on the Turkish genocide against the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Alawites."
-- from a posting above

This will come as news to some of the Armenians I know from Haleb, whose experience was only that the Alawites were preferable as rulers because they realized they had nothing to fear from Christians, and everything to fear from the "real" Muslims.

One of those "real" Muslims, Khaddam, who was the Vice-President under Hafiz al-Assad, having stolen tens of millions of dollars, put into French property, including a lavish private residence, has suddenly decided to make common cause with the Muslim Brotherood. The description of his change of heart leaves out entirely the most important points: that Khaddam is as big a crook as any of them, that he is not a democratic reformer but simply seeks to replace the Alawites with -- himself, and the whole business of how the Alawites must be terrified of a takeover by real Muslims (who would proceed to slaughter Alawites everywhere) is demurely left out of all news accounts. That shows the reporters do not know what they are reporting on.

Lulu wrote: "Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and the Armenian people need to do more to educate and scream about this code of silence over this genocide."

There used to be an organization of Armenian heroes who would take a stand when this kind of Islamo-Turkish holocaust denial took place. It was called the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).

The ASALA was founded in 1975 by Hagop Tarakchian and Hagop Hagopian and led by Hagopian while Turkey was in political turmoil. Its aim was to force the Turkish government to acknowledge its role in the Armenian genocide, compensate the survivors or their families and cede territory in the north of the country for an autonomous Armenian state to be unified with the then existing Armenian SSR.

The Turkish ambassador to Austria, Danis Tunaligil, was killed on October 22, 1975, allegedly by the ASALA [citation needed]. Between 1975 and 2005, 31 Turkish diplomats and 5 relatives were murdered by bombs or ambushes by ASALA [citation needed].

The group's activities began with bombing and assassination attacks on Turkish citizens and diplomats. The first bombing was an attack on the World Council of Churches (WCC) office in Beirut. Their first acknowledged killing was the assassination of the Turkish diplomat, Oktay Cerit, in Beirut on February 16, 1976. The group's eight point manifesto was published in 1981.

The group's most effective attack was on August 7, 1982 when nine people were killed and seventy were wounded in a bombing at Ankara airport. It was supported by Russia, Syria, Greece, and the PFLP. After the assassinations of its leaders, ASALA was repressed by a series of attacks by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), some carried out by Abdullah Çatlı, leader of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, which worked in cooperation with the MIT and with Gladio "stay-behind" NATO secret paramilitary organizations.

Even though ASALA no longer exists, the US State Department still lists this Christian Armenian organization as a terrorist group. This is criminal, since the Muslim terrorists of Kosovo have state department and NATO support. It is past time that ASALA be revived.

The first and last paragraph of my post above is my opinion. The rest is from the Wikipedia article on ASALA.

Spirit of 1683, that was a nice quote from Churchill, and apropos to today. Just wanted to avoid a friendly fire incident on Rep. Ed Markey and the 60 other Congressmen who had the courage to speak up.

More proof of my contention that the American Establishment is pro-Islamic

The US govt had a policy of being soft on Turkish massacres of Armenians as far back as 1922. George Horton, US consul in Smyrna in that year, thus himself a State Dept official, described how the State Dept and other govt departments of US refused or failed to pressure the new Turkish govt of Ataturk to stop massacring Armenians in Smyrna at that time, while US naval ships and naval ships of other powers were at anchor in the harbor.

Sources:
George Horton, The Blight of Asia
Marjorie Housepian, Smyrna Affair