Why did H.Res. 252 get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks. Or at least that's how they'd prefer it. An update on this story. "US administration to block vote on Turkey 'genocide'," from BBC News, March 5:
The Obama administration has said it will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks.
A congressional panel on Thursday approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House.
But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration would "work very hard" to prevent this.
Turkey voiced strong protests after the vote and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country had been accused of a crime it did not commit, adding the resolution would harm Turkish-US relations.
President Abdullah Gul said Turkey - a key Nato ally of the US - would "not be responsible for the negative results that this event may lead to".
Change of position
Mr Clinton - who had urged the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to hold the vote - said on Friday: "We are against this decision. Now we believe that the US Congress will not take any decision on this subject." [...]
During his campaign for the 2008 election, Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide.
Mrs Clinton has acknowledged his administration's change of opinion on the issue, saying circumstances had "changed in very significant ways".
So now it wasn't a genocide?
In October last year, Turkey and Armenia signed a historic accord normalising relations between them after a century of hostility.
Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide, but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.
"During his campaign for the 2008 election, Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide."
One more in a long litany of broken promises.
"Hope and change?"....my ass.
How can a president "block" a House resolution? Hasn't Obama heard of the doctrine of "Separation of Powers?" Perhaps Legislative branch of government should tell the Executive branch to bug off, and if it persists establish a commission to start laying the groundwork for impeachment.
I haven't seen comment anywhere on the degree to which the Turkish position might be inextricably intertwined with the role that Kemal Ataturk played in the Armenian genocide.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-203412-turkish-muslim-imam-kicks-off-congress-with-prayer.html
Anyone care to comment on this?
The significant change? The election is over...
'What is said in the campaign, stays in the campaign.'
He doesn't need the Armenian American votes, right now. He'll make another promise prior to the next election.
Do you think he'll apologize to Turkey for them committing genocide, or just for the US for having the bad taste to mention it?
Let historians decide if it's a genocide or not. I find it absurd that issues like these are decided by popular vote. Armenians and Turks lobby and bribe politicians and in the end who lobbies hard and spends more money wins.
As a Turk, I also criticize our stance on this issue. Nobody seems to wonder in Turkey what happened to those hundreds thousands of Armenians. Our school history textbooks are full of nonsense. They teach us that some Armenians helped Russia and they were deported. They talk like there were a few Armenians in Turkey and they were deported. No mention of killings. You never learn in school that they were hundreds of thousands.
Yes, I believe it was a genocide. But I still find it absurd that politicians decide this.
Oops - wrong link. The correct one is
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/kemal.html
My apologies.
What an unbelievable flake! Is he capable of following thru with anything he promised? I cannot remember the last president who was as out-of-touch as this guy clearly is. He'll sell out anyone and anything for the sake of political expediency. I was very young at the time and don't remember, but I doubt that even Dhimmi Carter was this horrendous this early into his term.
Eastview,
The resolution only passed committee. Obama's plan is to twist Democratic arms so it will not pass in the full House.
There is a confusion here, on the part of various Turkish spokesmen. The vote in the American Congress does not create, or uncreate, a fact, but recognizes it. The burden is on Turkey, to somehow begin to stop the nonsense usually offered when the subject of the Armenian massacres comes up. It could, as I have elsewhere suggested, stop the business of this "occurred in wartime" because that simply does not wash as an alibi. Why not? Because more than 100,000 Armenians were killed in the massacres of 1894-96, and the accounts that were published in this country at the time, with the eyewitness testimony of, among others, American missionaries then present in Turkey, made clear that this was Muslims killing Christians because they felt that the Christians were now insufficiently submissive -- because, ever since the so-called Tanzimat reforms of 1839, the Ottoman government had at least cosmetically been attempting, in order to minimize pressure from the European powers, to issue firmans that suggested non-Muslims would be given something like legal equality. It never happened, but the ensuing Muslim fury was expressed, for example, in the massacre of Maronites in Damascus in 1860.
Turkey, of course, contains many more erdogans than it does orhan-pamuks. And we can't expect much, because always and everywhere, the primitives outnumber the enlightened. But that is no reason for certain truths not to be stated, by the American Congress. Or by the French Assembly, which passed a similar resolution, and one does not see France suffering too terribly from Turkish retaliation. Or by anyone at all, who cares to study the matter.
I understand, Cornelius, but if House committee members, i.e., Democrats, weren't such cowards and suck-ups to Obama they'd respect their mandates as representatives of their district voters, not White House employees. They would resist the pressure, call him out on it, and then they could go from there. Even taking into account that the Democratic voters that put them into office are Obama supporters, this issue is far enough away from the usual sorts of domestic issues that energize Democrats that it should be possible to drive a wedge between them and the White House, even in spite of the arm twisting.
From the article:
"The Obama administration has said it will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks."
I don't know the wording of the bill.
But whatever it says, the subject is the World War I mass-murder of Armenian Christians by Turkish, Kurdish and Arab Muslims; a mass-murder which though possibly the largest in terms of numbers, was by no means the first or the last mass-murder of non-Muslims by Muslims within regions ruled and/ or inhabited by Turkish Muslims.
When I was younger, I was stationed in Sinop, Turkey in the military. Funny back then we had to travel to Turkey in civilian clothes, since the government did not want to see Americans there in military uniform. That was back in 1969. Turkey back then, in my young mind, was a great place, and the people, though different to my experience, seemed a giving people. After over twenty years in the military, and through being stationed in many different foreign countries, it became clear that we as Americans, truly have no defined sense of being. To me, this proposal by the Obama administration, represents another example of America not knowing who they are as a country. What should we stand for, how should we define our being. In my civilian examination of the threat of Islam, this is but another example of our government bowing to the dictates of another country, in an attempt to please, in a showing of not knowing of who we are as a country, and in a shameful manner of having no stated set of principles, or national identity. That this was genocide is obvious. The Turkish government does not want condemnation of this event, since they could be seen in a negative light. This is an example of Turkey knowing the truth of the event, but doing all they can to deny it. This is an example of our country having no defined identity, helping another country hide their identity of disgrace, for no purpose other than to appease their sensibilities. To many foreign countries have access to influence our government, over what should be active access by the common citizen.
Obama is an active danger to our nation, Obama and his administration are hell bent on defining American interests in the world as "how can we bow down to the golden alter of Islam, and please you today".
Hugh wrote:
There is a confusion here, on the part of various Turkish spokesmen. The vote in the American Congress does not create, or uncreate, a fact, but recognizes it.
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As a rational person, I of course agree. But I do not believe this gibes with the Islamic agenda. You see the situation all the time, where libel or "blasphemy" is considered in the light not of the truthfulness of a statement, but whether it makes Islam and Muslims look good or bad, or furthers the spread of Islam. *This* is what matters, not whether what is true or not.
If Islam were further along on its quest to render the entire world Dar-al-Islam, there is a strong likelihood that Muslim Turks would *tout* the Armenian genocide, as a warning to Infidels to stay in line, convert to Islam, or face the bloody consequences.
But right now, there are still too many Infidels in the world, and they are still too powerful. So the Armenian genocide is an embarrassment, and must be denied at all costs.
more:
The burden is on Turkey, to somehow begin to stop the nonsense usually offered when the subject of the Armenian massacres comes up. It could, as I have elsewhere suggested, stop the business of this "occurred in wartime" because that simply does not wash as an alibi. Why not? Because more than 100,000 Armenians were killed in the massacres of 1894-96
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Very true, Hugh. And not only did the genocide *precede* the war, they also outlasted it. The last of the bloody massacres occurred in the early 1920s, long after WWI ended, including the horrific destruction of Christian-majority Smyrna in 1922.
What is most significant about this is that *it did not occur during the rule of the Ottoman Empire*, but under Ataturk and the Turkish Republic—the same Turkish Republic that governs the country today.
Ataturk may have cast a jaundiced eye on Islam, but he did nothing to stop the mass murders of Jews and Christians, which continued unbroken under his aegis.
Mass murder of Jews? Oh Turks, cold blooded murderers surely did that too. If you say it's not true, you are a denialist. Shame on you Turks.
Funny thing is, muslims usually claim Ataturk was a secret Jew.