PLAYING POLITICS WITH GENOCIDE

[Tigermike 3,055]

PLAYING POLITICS WITH GENOCIDE

HOW THE DEMOCRATS ARE USING THE ARMENIANS TO GET THEIR WAY IN IRAQ

By RALPH PETERS

October 14, 2007 -- In the midst of the First World War, the Young Turks who had taken over the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against their Armenian subjects. At least a million Armenians were murdered - with nauseating cruelty - or died of abuse, heat, hunger and thirst.

The only reason any survived was that the Turks lacked the administrative skills and technologies to kill everyone. Not every captive fit into the burning churches. On the death marches across Anatolia into the Syrian desert, guards ran out of bullets. And even sadists grew weary of bayoneting children and clubbing old men to death.

Women were raped by the tens of thousands. Many were raped repeatedly. Then they were killed. Or enslaved. Or left to die of exposure by the roadside.

Ancient communities were annihilated. A magnificent culture - the remnants of the world's first Christian kingdom - drowned in blood.

Only Turks question this history. The eyewitness accounts are extensive - not only from Armenian survivors, but from American and German consuls and missionaries. The documentation is readily available (texts crowd one of my bookshelves).

Hitler cited the Armenian Genocide as an inspiration for the Holocaust - the lesson he drew was that the Turks got away with it. The world never intervened. Apologists for the Allies blamed the war. The truth is that the eyewitnesses went ignored: Armenian lives had less value then than do those of Darfur refugees today.

Last Wednesday, the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution formally declaring the Armenian tragedy what it was: genocide. Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to bring the resolution to a vote on the floor, after which it would go to the Senate.

We need to stop it. It's a travesty and a betrayal. Of Armenian-Americans. And of our troops.

Make no mistake: I'm on the Armenian side in the court of history. When the same resolution came up in years past, I supported it. The Armenian survivors - their descendents, at this point - deserve justice.

And I have no sympathy with the Turks. The Turks are jerks. After the United States supported them unswervingly for more than a half-century, they stiffed us the single time we needed help - when we asked to move an Army division through Turkey on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And the Ankara government has led an internal campaign of anti-Americanism far more lurid and vicious than the old Soviet bloc's anti-Western propaganda. It's not just Turkey's Islamists, but its secular nationalists, too. The anti-American hatred spewing from the Turkish media is uglier than Barbra Streisand at four in the morning.

The Turks tormented their Kurdish minority for decades - and express outrage when Kurds respond. Now they're threatening to invade northern Iraq, while whining that honor-killings, pervasive corruption and anti-Western venom shouldn't deny them membership in the EU.

Despite all that, we've got to kill this resolution. It's not the wording - but the timing.

Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.

That's what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn't about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It's a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals.

The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won't be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.

The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we'd be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.

It's a brilliant ploy - the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they're responding to their Armenian-American constituents - while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.

For the Democrats in Congress, it looks like a cost-free strategy. For our troops? When did the Dems give a damn about our troops? This resolution isn't a stand in favor of historical justice. It's an end-run that ducks behind the bench. It's one of the most cynical betrayals in our legislative history - of our troops, of Armenian-Americans, of the Kurds under threat from the Turkish military and of the people of Iraq.

We can't let Pelosi & Co. get away with this one. We need to call the Dems on it and make it clear that we, the people, know what they're trying to do.

Every human being with a drop of Armenian blood deserves justice. This isn't it.

“Ralph Peters' latest book is “Wars of Blood and Faith."

link

[AURaptor 1,126]

What's worse, that the Dems think the US voters are that stupid, or that they know we're not, and still don't care.

[CCTAU 3,350]

I think you're just buying into the fear. Surely the Turks have a special yellow-brick road we can use. As soon as Hillary is elected, she and Oz will get together and make sure that all is well. We won't even need the yellow brick road because Oz will instantly transport all of our soldiers home where they can be safe and the dims can claim victory. And then we can all have universal healthcare and live happily ever after.

To allow this to happen is definitely an attempt to shut down the troops without having the balls to just vote against funding. Because, as they have learned, the American people will not stand for that. So they need to be sneakier.

[Tigermike 3,055]

But they support the troops.

They care more.

They really care about honesty.

[Tigermike 3,055]

Here is another piece on the same situation.

Pelosi’s Most Dangerous Ploy

by Jed Babbin

Posted: 10/15/2007

Congressional Democrats anxious to force a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq are frustrated by their inability to muster a veto-proof majority for legislation that would establish a firm date for retreat. But what they cannot do directly they are now working hard to do indirectly.

According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey is the transshipment point for about 70% of all air cargo (including 33% of the fuel) going to supply US forces in Iraq. Included are about 95% of the new “MRAP” -- mine-resistant, ambush-protected -- vehicles designed to save the lives of American troops. Turkey wasn’t always this helpful. In 2003, the Turks refuse permission for the 4th Infantry Division to enter Iraq through Turkey.

Turkey’s Erdogan government has indicated that if the House of Representatives takes action on a non-binding resolution being pushed by Speaker Pelosi, Turkey might revoke our ability to use Incirlik as a waypoint for Iraq supplies.

At issue is the non-binding resolution passed on October 10 by the House Foreign Affairs Committee that labels the 1915-1923 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire a genocide. Such resolutions can be passed by either or both houses of Congress and are not subject to presidential veto.

On October 11, Pelosi said, “While that may have been a long time ago, genocide is taking place now in Darfur, it did within recent memory in Rwanda, so as long as there is genocide there is need to speak out against it.”

But the resolution is gratuitous and Democrats’ timing suspicious. It’s gratuitous because, in 1981, President Reagan referred to the Armenian massacre as genocide in a proclamation commemorating the Nazi Holocaust.

Why, if Pelosi is so committed to ending genocide, aren’t she and Senate Democrat leaders doing something about the ongoing genocide in Darfur or the massacres of protesters in Burma?

Speaker Pelosi said, “This isn't about the Erdogan government. This is about the Ottoman Empire." Baloney.

The Democrat leadership could write and pass legislation insisting the UN intervene to save the living instead of using the memory of the dead to score political points. In neither case should we intervene militarily. But the lack of concern for ongoing mass murder proves the Democrats’ only purpose is to enrage the Turkish government and end their cooperation on Iraq.

The timing couldn’t be worse. Not only are we dependent on Turkey for our principal supply line into Iraq, we are in on the verge of a crisis with Turkey, trying to convince the Erdogan government to continue to refrain from attacking the PKK -- Kurdish terrorist forces -- that have been raiding into southeastern Turkey for years.

While the president and Secretary of State Rice appeal for restraint, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has called upon the Turkish parliament to declare a mobilization against the PKK terrorists.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) told me, “We are a nation at war, and our first concern must always be the brave men and women of our armed forces, who I believe are done a great disservice by this symbolic House vote. This is just one more example of Democrats in the House being either oblivious or indifferent to the welfare of American forces serving in harm’s way.”

After the House committee vote, Turkish Ambassador to the United States Nabi Sensoy was recalled to Ankara for consultations. In diplomatic terms, the recall of an ambassador is a very serious matter, indicating a near-break in relations between the nations involved.

Amb. Sensoy spoke to me and HUMAN EVENTS chief political correspondent John Gizzi as he prepared to leave for Ankara.

Sensoy said he spoke to Speaker Pelosi and that she had made it very clear that she would bring the resolution up for a vote on the House floor next month.

The ambassador referred to the widespread agenda of interests that Turkey and the US share, from the Balkans throughout the Middle East and the Caucasus. He said it was a wonderful working relationship, proving effective against terrorism.

Sensoy said the memories of the events surrounding the massacre of Armenians are very fresh in the minds of his countrymen, many of whom lost relatives in the carnage. He said, “…we are very sorry for what happened. And we mourn the loss of life. But nobody is talking about the hundreds of thousands of people who perished at the hands of the Armenians in that period.”

He added, “The sentiments of the Turkish people are totally disregarded in this whole affair. And it is being presented that all of a sudden the Turkish nation, after one thousand years of togetherness with the Armenians went simply berserk and started killing the Armenians. The real truth is that the population living in the east of the Ottoman Empire at the time sided with the invading Russian army and they attacked the Turkish population.”

Turkey is our most under-appreciated ally. Its eighth president, Turgut Ozal, was a great friend of America, once referring to his nation as, “little America.” When Ozal died suddenly in 1993, neither President Clinton nor Vice President Gore went to the funeral, an insult the Turks remember. Europe has been even less appreciative. Turkey has practically begged to become a member of the European Union, but its applications to what some Turks call the “Christian club” have been stalled again and again because of European criticism of its human rights record.

There is a deep-seated cultural sensitivity among the Turkish people and their government on the issue of the Armenian massacre nine decades ago. Amb. Sensoy may have been thinking about the far-reaching effects – including on Turkey’s application for EU membership -- of the House genocide resolution when he told us, “No nation would like to be labeled with that greatest of human rights violations.”

House Republican leaders are very concerned about the effects the Democrats’ resolution could have. House Minority Leader John Boehner told me, “If the Turks cut off our ability to use Incirlik, there’s no question that this could jeopardize our troops on the ground in Iraq. And frankly, if this is just the latest in the Democrats’ string of back-door attempts to force a retreat from the war against al Qaeda, it’s certainly the most dangerous.”

Speaker Pelosi is apparently so intent on forcing an end to American involvement in Iraq that she is willing to interfere in our tenuous friendship with Turkey. When she does, it will be an historic event: the House of Representatives will be responsible for alienating a key ally in time of war and possibly interdicting supplies to US troops.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22840

[AFTiger 282]

History Lesson

Democrats responsed to Greek American special interests in 1975

"US Arms Embargo against Turkey - after 30 YearsAn Institutional Approach towards US Policy

Making"Murat Karagöz * Abstract The paper aims to analyse a unique era in Turkish-American relationsthrough discussion on the arms sales embargo imposed by the United States on Turkey as a consequence of Turkish military intervention in Cyprus in 1974. It tries to highlight the strife between the legislative and executive branches of US politics,where both have altered on the embargo case. The role of ethnic lobbies is another element that is questioned. An institutional explanation is used as a theoreticalframework. In conclusion, the paper says that the embargo had negatively affectedUS-Turkish relations and paved the way for the weakening of the south-easternflank of NATO.IntroductionThe arms sale embargo imposed by the United States against its close allyTurkey, as a reaction to the Turkish military intervention in Cyprus in Summer1974 constitutes a turning point in the enhanced relationship between both countries. Today, there is little doubt among politicians and academicians alike that then early four-year long embargo period cast a dark shadow on the then already fragile alliance, and created, especially in the eyes of the Turkish public, a deep lack of confidence towards the United States. The embargo on aid to Turkey went into effect on 5 February 1975. By wayof response, Turkey closed all American military installations except one air base.Starting from the last days of President Nixon, this process involved two more administrations in the United States, those of Ford and Carter, as well as their Secretaries of State, Kissinger and Vance. The embargo was ultimately lifted inOctober 1978.

Turkey is a crucial ally in the middle east and this move by the Democrats serves no pupose other than to damage Turkish-American relations and endanger American lives.

If you recall, a residual from the former boycott caused Turkey to block its ports to us and prevented one division of American forces from jumping off from Turkey and into Northern Iraq. That division then had to circumnavigate around Africa and disembark in Kuwait three weeks after the war.

If this does not convince you that Democrats cannot be trusted to guard America's security then you are truely lost.

[Tigermike 3,055]

Once again, the Democrats are unable to make a distinction between reality and myth when it comes to turkeys. Undoubtedly they see this sort of behavior as a way of gaining a little cheap glory for bravely standing up against the genocide of a few generations ago. What a bunch of courageous men and women!

[Tigermike 3,055]

I find it a little more than strange that the lib dims will go on and on for days about a phony Rush Limbaugh controversy or about gay rights, but never once respond to this. Why would that be?

[CCTAU 3,350]

I find it a little more than strange that the lib dims will go on and on for days about a phony Rush Limbaugh controversy or about gay rights, but never once respond to this. Why would that be?

It's because they support the troops. Just not the President or the war. <aka. selective jihad>