Obama vs. Obama: "During his election campaign Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide."
An update on this story. "US Congress panel accuses Turkey of Armenian 'genocide'," from BBC News, March 4:
A US congressional panel has described the killing of Armenians by Turkish forces during World War I as genocide, despite White House objections.
The resolution was narrowly approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Turkey, a key US ally, responded by recalling its ambassador in Washington for consultations. It has fiercely opposed the non-binding resolution.
The White House had warned that the vote would harm reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia.
The resolution calls on President Barack Obama to ensure that US foreign policy reflects an understanding of the "genocide" and to label the World War I killings as such in his annual statement on the issue.
It was approved by 23 votes to 22 by the committee. [...]
In 2007, a similar resolution passed the committee stage, but was shelved before a House vote after pressure from the George W Bush administration.
'Too important'
During his election campaign Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide.
Before the vote, committee chairman Howard Berman urged fellow members of the committee to endorse the resolution.
"I believe that Turkey values its relationship with the United States at least as much as we value our relations with Turkey," he said....
Is it going to be made clear that the genocidal ideology of Islam is what's responsible for the Armenian genocide?
darcy, dear,
They will be able to connect the dots, in spite of a Democrat majority. :)
Well,
I am guessing that "The King of Change" is going to suspect he is without clothes real soon.
... and the American public, those that voted for his Changelingnes, are going to think really hard about voting for anyone who is a regular attendee of Palestinian rallies.
Thanks, Paleologos, I hope you're right! Connect those dots, Dhimmis.
Oh, and I love "Emperor's New Clothes" references, so thanks for that, too.
"I believe that Turkey values its relationship with the United States at least as much as we value our relations with Turkey," he said....
Oh? Is Turkey sending the US any jizya money or is the flow the other way around? The US continues to be delusional believing it can purchase Mahoundian allegeance...Everywhere that is tried, it is followed by failure...'Blood/Islam is thicker than water'...Never trust a Mahoundian with his hand out...or better yet, never trust a Mahoundian...
you know who your friends when are when the chips are down. stop the US tax dollars to the islamic failed states and see how many islamic states support you. a big fat zero!
How about Congress address Islam's genocide being planned right now? Or is that too much to ask?
A little light penetrates the darkness.
Contrast Europe with Eurabia - The Germans have no problem with the history of Holocaust, Turkey, however, continues to throw the Armenian Holocaust down the "memory hole".
This constant denial is the biggest reason that Turkey should be denied entrance into the EU.
All we have to do is say, "We are offended by your blatant disregard for diplomatic manners. A reduction of your foreign aid by 900 million dollars is being contemplated."
They want that money.
They need that money.
They will do almost anything to get that money.
"This constant denial is the biggest reason that Turkey should be denied entrance into the EU." -- from a posting just above
No, even if Turkey were full of people recognizing, and apologizing all over the place, for the mass murders (in 1894-96, and then, on a far greater scale, from 1915 on) that would make no difference to the question of whether or not Turkey, a Muslim country of 80 million (and with Kemalism's hold temporary, while Islam's hold is permanent)Turkey should never be considered part of Europe, and admitted to the E.U. Islam is not part of Europe, or rather is part of European history only because it came, in the West, to the Iberian peninsula, with Arab conquerors, and in the East, came with Turkish, Osmanli, conquerors. The spirit of science, and the essence of European art, and of European political thought, are all contradicted by the spirit, and the letter, of Islam.
The first step in dealing with the past is to recognize it for what it was. Trying to hide the past or sweep it under the rug in the end serves no one well. The world needs to acknowledge the horrors of the past and then move forward from there.
Unfortunately the teachings in the Qu'ran disallow change and the words from the prophet Mohammed are considered pure so the past is still alive and well.
As the horrors of the Nazis holocaust should never be hidden so should the horrors of the Armenian Genocide as well
We should never ignore or forget as human beings what happened in Turkey, the USSR, or places like Auschwitz.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/album_Auschwitz/mutimedia/index.HTML
The Turks are blaming Obama, saying that he didn't try hard enough to block the resolution. They underestimated the will of the American people. So now they are hinting that billions in defense contracts with American firms will be cancelled. Where will that leave the Turks -- militarily under-equipped and under-armed? The Turks need America more than America needs them.
It is really to wonder why Turkey refuses stubbornly accepting the facts... Such an acceptance would be a freeing itself from such a heavy burden, after all.
In fact the things are easily explainable: During the collapsing of Ottoman empire the Armenians were the only ones existing regionally in the midst of the empire. So, when they claimed their liberation, as happened with all the other nations existing in the periphery of the empire, they became victims of a big scaled ethnic cleansing.
Really, the ethnic cleansing that took place was not built on a racial superiority ideological basis (as is in the case of Nazism) but rather on trying to eliminate totally a population belonging to another ethnic and religious identity so that it might not consitute a 'threat' anymore. That's to say maybe it is not a 'genocide' in the sense of trying to eliminate a race because of its being considered a 'filth' on earth, in the biological sense, but surely it was a genocide, even if it happened because of matters of feeling insecure.
Today's Turks are objecting oftenly saying that we never had such a biologically meant racism in our worldview, throughout our history. That is true somehow maybe, but the only reason that a genocide may take place is not such a racist ideology.
As to Islam's role in those so tragic events... it is obvious. But... maybe one of the most tragic realities regarding Turks is that, even themselves are a 'devshirme' nation in a n astonishingly large scale... And all this reality is still haunting their present lives. They are the ones that most need to be pitied maybe, nowadays.
Some correction to the above I did write (my English is learnt mainly from readings, as you see :-)
Correct:
Today's Turks are objecting oftenly saying 'we never had such a biologically meant racism in our worldview, throughout our history'...
if we can't even talk about the genocide from 100 years ago how can even begin to bring up the one from 10 years ago?
I refer, of course, to the attempts to wipe out Nagorno Karabakh recently.
Of course, the recent genocide makes the need for the reconciliation talks referred to in the passage.
How can you have reconciliation when one party is in denial...
According to Turkey, there is nothing to be reconciled over...
Does anyone know if Turkey still illegally blockages the border with Armenia to trade?
But the mass murder of Armenians did not take place only in the context of a war. There was a previous massacre, of more than 100,000 Armenians (I don't have the exact figure) that everyone keeps forgetting about, but that took place in 1894-96, in which Kurds played a prominent part, as they did in the later mass murders. It was a case of Muslims killing Christians, not just Turks engaged in "ethnic cleansing" as you suggest. Furthermore, there had been intermittent attacks on Christians, as the massacre of Maronites in Damascus in 1860, by Muslims who were not only Turks but also Arabs.
What I have repeatedly suggested is that secular Turks, who understand or can be made to understand that the massacres of the Armenians were prompted by Islam, should be able to admit that, because they, essentially, do not have a real stake in defending Islam and may have a stake in making clear what has been done by some because of what Islam inculcates.
It isn't "the Turk" who committed the massacres of Armenians or of Maronites in Damascus, but Muslims -- Turks and Kurds and even Arabs, in the Syrian Desert, harried and kidnapped straggling Armenian women and children on their way to co-religionists in Beirut and Aleppo.
The Assyrians massacred -- more than 100,000 -- in Iraq, in 1933, just a few months after the British pulled out in 1932 (having received promises from the local Arabs that they wouldn't mistreat the Assyrians) were killed not by "Iraqis" but by Muslim Arabs. The same, mutatis mutandis, can be said about the Armenians.
In recognizing the truth about the killings, secular Turks should lay the blame where it belongs -- on the teachings of Islam. And since their whole cause is to systematically constrain Islam as a political and social force, this truth helps them, even if it may be difficult for them to grasp that, so unwilling are so many, even those who harbor their own grave doubts about Islam, to publicly speak what more and more non-Muslims are coming to understand. And the longer it takes those who call themselves Muslims to admit to what many non-Muslmis now understand, the greater the suspicions they arouse in the West, suspicions which cannot be alleviated unless there is an open and frank admission of what Islam inculcates. The mixture as before simply will no longer do.
I said it was the biggest reason, not the only reason. But you are right. I do seem to notice that the falsification of history seems to accompany Islam, but is not unique to Islam. The point, and I do have one, is that however Turkey may try, it can never truly be part of Europe in that at it's core lies the Islamic practice of taquiyya.
This man obama goes back on his election promise for the sake of appeasing muslims.
To what new lows will he stoop yet?
Bat Ye'or in her invaluable "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam" cites many archival documents reporting on these events.
As governors of most of the Middle East in that period, the Ottoman Turks bore total responsibility for all that happened to the Armenians in those areas, not just in the lands of what is now modern Turkey.
I agree with Hugh. The longer conscientious Turks avoid naming the culprit...POLITICAL ISLAM...the longer it will take for Turkey to be accepted by the rest of the world as a civilized country.
Germany owned up to its collective crimes against humanity. The leaders were exposed before world opinion and held accountable. Germany has paid for its crimes and new generations of Germans continue to pay.
The world just wants Turks to say: 'Yes, they did it. It was morally wrong.'
But they can't do it, because ISLAM IS NEVER WRONG!
Perfect religion, perfect prophet, perfect book. Except they aren't perfect.
Hey Hugh, ofcourse, whatever happened to Armenians those so tragic years happened by the justification offered generously from the well known Islamic mindset... Turning from human being to a beast that can do such demonic things needs a very strong 'excuse', no doubt.
I just wanted to underline the so difficult regional stand Armenians found themselves... Nobody doubts that if it would be possible the same things would have been happened to all the other peoples who wanted to depart from the collapsing empire.
Let not forget that even Central Asian Turks' themeselves' conversion to Islam was a very bloody one. The fact that they have, as people, so many Alevis in their population can be seen, surely, as a sign of their trying to find a way to 'breath' in a strict Sunni official environment, throughout the Islam's reign in their areas. Sufi orders of purely Central Asian Turkish origin as Beqtashiyah, for example, are full of Shamanic worldview elements and practices (they have been persecuted severly after some period in the Ottoman empire).
But, unfortunately, when the years (and much more,the centuries) pass and the new generations find themselves in an official environment of already founded belief systems, they forget or have not acces to information about what has happened (Muslims Indians' and Pakistanis' case is very eloquent as to this). They feel the need to protect their centuries ago imposed indentities which they perceive as their very natural identities... And they can be very cruel in their agony to do this. It is a tragedy, indeed.
There is no more dangerous and devastating thing than a lie that has consecrated itself in minds as the par exellence truth.
I fully expect the measure will not be adopted by the general congress. They will defend the continued US denial of the Armenian Genocide on the grounds that we benefit from the relationship with Turkey. They may go on to add that although "tragic events" did happen, it was long ago and it's not worth upsetting our military ties.
I expect that congress will once again succumb to this argument.
This is of course a specious argument because Turkey is a Muslim nation and has never been, will not and can not become an ally. As the Koran tells us, when dealing with non-believers, conciliatory gestures are are just a delaying tactic.
Kinnedar - you observed that "[the Turks] are hinting that billions in defense contracts with American firms will be cancelled. Where will that leave the Turks -- militarily under-equipped and under-armed? "
Hmmm.
Now, if I were one of Turkey's non-Muslim neighbours - neighbours such as little Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Cyprus - who have deep, traumatic memories of the ghastly cruelty of the centuries of Ottoman Muslim imperial occupation, oppression and spoliation, punctuated by orgies of mass murder, not to mention the hideous devshirme - I think I could contemplate with perfect equanimity and indeed with positive pleasure the prospect of a Turkey that was 'militarily under-equipped and under-armed'. For to be quite frank, I would feel much, much safer.
And something further... I do consider a big shame to make a so tragic event a matter of political dealings. If there has been a genocide it has to be accepted and said openly, whatever the cost. Truth never damages and proves always itself benign even if it takes some time to show its final gain. This is God's way after all.
We can not even imagine what those victims of the genocide suffered. And now we do their memory a matter of interest dealings? Shame on us, if it is so. We are sinning gravely in such a case before God and the consequences will be in accordance with our hardened hearts.
Armen
you're right. Turkey, so long as the vast majority of its population remains in thrall to Islam, CANNOT and MUST NOT be trusted by *any* non-Muslim country.
It is no true friend of the USA.
And as for the so-called "reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia" - pffft.
Taqiyya, taqiyya. Armenia MUST accept that so long as Turkey's population remains nearly 100 % identifying-Muslim, any such 'reconciliation talks' are perfectly futile, and any agreement of any kind that the Turks sign off on, CANNOT and MUST NOT be relied upon by Armenia. Best not to waste time and energy in such talks, or on such agreements. All they will prove to be is yet another hudna, modelled on the specious Treaty of Hudaybiyya, to deceive and destroy the non-Muslim party.
Armen - I would recommend that Raymond Ibrahim's classic analyses, from the original sources, of Islam's elaborately-conceived and religiously-sanctioned doctrines of deception, should be translated into Armenian ASAP and circulated amongst the Armenian community both within Armenia herself, and abroad.
The first such essay, 'Islam's Doctrines of Deception', can be found in the journal entitled 'Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst', September 26 2008. (You will have to find this in its nondigital form in a library and make a photocopy, or else contact Jane's - that venerable source of information on all things military - and purchase that particular issue of the Islamic Affairs Analyst, so as to have Mr Ibrahim's article handy on your shelf for the better informing of your friends and colleagues).
Mr Ibrahim (whose background is Arabic-speaking Coptic Christian; he is the son of refugees from Egypt) posted a draft version of the article on jihadwatch [subsequently, due to copyright issues with 'Jane's', he had to withdraw it; but not before I had read it and absorbed his main arguments.]
In it Mr Ibrahim mentioned, among other things, [QUOTE] " the authoritative Arabic text Al-Taqiyya fi Al-Islam", which states -
“Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it.
"We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream. … Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era [p. 7; my (Ibrahim's) own translation].” END QUOTE.
The second is available online, here:
http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2010 - "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War".
I suggest you should also get translated, and circulate, the article 'a civilisation of deception' - which is a cri de coeur from an American who had done time in Iraq.
http://antiprotester.blogspot.com/2006/04/life-in-iraq-part-ii-civilization-of.html
Islam is par excellence The Religion of the Lie and Muslims are People of the Lie. Lying, the Lie, Falsehood of every imaginable kind, suffuses Islamic societies and populations to an extent far beyond that encountered in almost any other known human cultural group *except* perhaps such societies as East Germany during the Soviet period.
A few 'data points' consisting of the personal experience of jihadwatchers:
"I once talked to a Saudi about the importance of telling the truth. He responded: "Only a fool tells the truth!" Funny that!"
Posted by: Mark Alexander at February 19, 2006 11:23 PM
"...in Anchorage, Alaska after 9/11.
"A muslim owned a printing company and destroyed all of his equipment and spray painted anti-muslim comments around his office.
'The community started sending him money to help him out, only to find out he was the one behind it.
'He was finally prosecuted on tax and bank fraud. Seems that he had one set of tax returns for IRS and one set for the banks he was getting loans for.
'A majority of muslims that I do business with laugh and admit to fraud on a regular basis and say it is ok in their religion, because we are infidels.
'A primary occurance is insurance fraud of personal injury. Just intentionally step in front of a moving car.
'Oh, they laugh...they get put into the hospital, all expenses paid, and then settle with the insurance company for $100,000-200,000.00. They laugh and say only in America can you do that, they say in their countries they can't get insurance because of their societies dishonesty.
'There are a whole group of Iranians that move up and down the west coast kiting checks to the tune of over $500,000.00 a month and sending it back east. You don't see anything about that in the media. But the FBI and most financial fraud units are very aware of it. They are called the "Iranian gypsies".
- Posted by: alaskan1000 at October 4, 2004 6:45 PM'
And another jihadwatcher with bitter first-hand experience of Muslims:
"I am always amused at the unsophisticated way the Muslim men I know and read about, can lie - for example, that British troops are raping muslim women.
'Although I will not draw broad generalizations, *the Muslim acquaintances I know will try lie after lie to me, until one of them sticks and I am deceived.
'They are not talking politics or religion, just everyday subjects* {my emphasis - dda}.
'The general derision that Muslim men hold for the rest of us causes them to underestimate our powers of reason, and over-estimate our naivete.
'Does anyone else have this experience of Muslim statements that would be comical, if they were not delivered with such seriousness?
'If the Muslims in general become better liars, we will all be in trouble.
- Posted by: VoiceOfReason at July 14, 2005 7:54 AM
There are many, many more such testimonies in the archives - all of which, added together, add up to a thoroughly damning portrait of a 'culture' shot through and through with falsehood to an extent that is absolutely mind-boggling for anyone raised within the West.
Dendrite: Of course I agree with the spirit of your post, but Islam does not apologise and it is no surprise that Turkey does not regard the Armenian genocide as a "burden" from which it needs to seek closure by confession.
I cannot imagine there are more Turks than can be counted on the fingers of one mitten that are "burdened" by the genocide of a non-Muslim people, especially when we consider the concepts of perfection and perpetuity that enabled Islamic expansion in a couple of hundred years from a couple of hundred followers in the dustbowl of the Arabian Peninsula, to control much of the known world.
It may be off topic but relevant at least to me, that when I have the opportunity to observe Muslims in the West I am often struck by wonder, whether their ancestors were Jew or Christian, how they were converted, at which point the last traces of these richer cultures were removed from their customs and traditions and replaced by the veil of terminal bondage...and what the observed would feel today, knowing the truth of their past!