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Pelosi backtracks on Armenian Genocide bill

Oct 17, 2007 7:12 pm By Greg

Whatever one may think of the current congressional leadership, one had to give them credit for pushing ahead with the non-binding resolution to acknowledge one of the great crimes of history, the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks during World War I. The shame is that it has taken so long.

Now it seems they are getting cold feet. In a reasonable world, it would not be necessary for a legislative body to pronounce on matters properly left to historians and individual conscience. Alas, this is no longer a reasonable world. That Turkey insists on continuing to deny the genocide is an affront to decency and the memory of the dead. How would the world react to a German government refusing the epithet “genocide” to describe the destruction of European Jewry during World War II?

By Daniel Dombey in the Financial Times:

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, on Wednesday backtracked on her support for a US Congressional resolution that has infuriated Turkey”s government, amid increasing doubts over whether the measure would ever be approved.

As recently as the weekend, Ms Pelosi said that she planned to take the bill, which denounces mass killings of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire as genocide, to the full House this year. Ms Pelosi is a long- standing backer of the measure, despite the anger it has caused in Turkey.

But on Wednesday, facing increasing criticism and a series of high-profile defections from the ranks of the bill’s supporters, she toned down her commitment to take it to a full House vote.

“Whether it will come up or not and what the action will be remains to be seen,” she said.

During this week, declared support for the bill has fallen below the level needed for House approval, with at least 10 Congressmen withdrawing their backing in addition to several others who peeled off earlier this year. As of yesterday, the bill had 215 sponsors or co-sponsors in the 435-member House.

[…]

“One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire,” said President George W. Bush on Wednesday, after having spoken by phone to Ms Pelosi on the issue the day before. “Congress has more important work to do than antagonising a democratic ally in the Muslim world, especially one that’s providing vital support for our military every day.”

Funny, one recalls the Allied governments pretty well “sorting out the historical record” of the Third Reich at Nuremberg and elsewhere. And I don’t think Pelosi is proposing to hang anyone. Maybe she should.

I had earlier responded to a disgraceful piece in National Review Online by Barbara Lerner, “Judgement Time”, that counseled against recognition of the genocide. (I used to work at NR so watching them lapse into moral autism bothers me.) To wit:

Barbara Lerner’s “Judgement Time” on the movement to recognize the Armenian Genocide committed by Turkey during World War I left me rubbing my eyes in disbelief. Is this the same National Review started by William Buckley to counter the popular lies of anti-Western ideologies and expose their brutal nature? Did Barbara Lerner really write, “All things considered, this doesn’t look like a propitious moment for America to take a stand on the Armenian genocide question”? When, pray, would be “a propitious moment”? Should we wait another ninety years to pass before taking a stand on a gruesome, state-sponsored mass-murder that the Turkish government continues to insist never happened? Where are earth have NR’s moral scruples gone?

For anyone who still retains doubts on the question of the genocide, they should take up Peter Balakian’s “The Burning Tigris.” The genocide was attested to at the time by numerous Western eyewitnesses, many of them Americans, and widely reported in the American press. The only outstanding issue is whether the West will continue to connive with the Turks’ lies.

It astonishes that one should need to remind NR about the perils of continuing to abet official lies, whatever their character. It is significant that the Armenian Genocide has been compared with the Jewish Genocide during World War II, but not for the reasons given. As I have written, “On the eve of unleashing his genocidal war machine on Europe, Adolf Hitler reassured his subordinates, ‘Who, after all, remembers the Armenians?'” Who indeed?

Speaker Pelosi may contacted via her website at: http://www.house.gov/pelosi/contact/contact.html.

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