A vote better left to historians

Jane Harmon:

As one whose own family was decimated by the Holocaust, I respond very personally to charges that I would deny the existence of savage acts of inhumanity against a group of people because of ethnic, religious or racial differences -- be they Jews, Darfurians, Rwandans or Armenians.

Yet that's exactly what I was accused of last week after I sent a letter to Rep. Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urging him to withdrawHR 106, which I had co-sponsored earlier in the year. Some Armenian Americans, whose passion I appreciate, have misinterpreted my determination that the time is not right to vote on such a resolution as "denial" of the Armenian genocide. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No question: The debate raging in Washington over the Armenian genocide resolution is personal. Similar resolutions have passed the House twice -- in 1975 and 1984 -- and we are poised to pass another before Thanksgiving. Whether it will be brought to a vote in the Senate remains unclear.

I originally co-sponsored the resolution because I was convinced that the terrible crime against the Armenian people should be recognized and condemned. But after a visit in February to Turkey, where I met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Armenian Orthodox patriarch and colleagues of murdered Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, I became convinced that passing this resolution again at this time would isolate and embarrass a courageous and moderate Islamic government in perhaps the most volatile region in the world.

...
It happened and it does not need a vote to validate the fact. It is not like not voting is denying the fact. The Turks don't really deny that a lot of Armenians were killed, they just have some nebulous claim that it happened in a war where a lot of Turks were killed too. The subject might be of more interest if the Turks were continuing to kill Armenians in great numbers, but there is no evidence that any are being killed in an on going genocide. There is no evidence that the Turks desire that all Armenians be killed the way Iran's leaders desire the death of Israelis.

What the resolution does is take the eye off the current desires of some for genocide and the help that the turks have given us in thwarting that objective.

Comments

  1. libhom4:33 PM

    Jane Harman is a bought and paid for politician who is obsessed with making sure our troops continue to die for Big Oil, Halliburton, and other war profiteers. She is more than willing to condone a genocide if it keeps access to Turkey to prolong a sickening and inexcusable war in Iraq.

    Harman's behavior reminds me of the wealthy Germans who went along with Hitler for selfish reasons, letting him commit horrible atrocities.

    ReplyDelete

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