Bush remembers 'mass killings,' not genocide
President Bush has done it again -- commemorate the genocide of around 1.5 million Armenians nearly a century ago without offending the Turkish government by avoiding the word "genocide." Click here to read Bush's complete statement; here's an excerpt:
On this day of remembrance, we honor the memory of the victims of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire. I join the Armenian community in America and around the world in commemorating this tragedy and mourning the loss of so many innocent lives.
Bush later implores Turkey and Armenia to normalize relations and praises those who "support joint efforts for an open examination of the past in search of a shared understanding of these tragic events." But an overwhelming consensus of historians already has a clear understanding of what went on between 1915 and 1917: that the mass deportations, forced marches with no food or water and senseless massacres were nothing more than a genocide of Armenians by the Young Turk government of the moribund Ottoman Empire. Bush's call for an "open examination" is nothing more than a nod to Turkey's rigid (and incorrect) position that whether the events of 1915 - 1917 constitute a genocide is an open question. It isn't.
Matt Welch, a former editor at The Times' opinion pages, wrote about Bush's mealy-mouthed genocide statements last year; click here to read his Op-Ed.
Bush is just a pawn on a chess-board. Anyone read on this topic knows that chances of the Armenian Genocide passing in USA are slim, very slim, gratis to Jewish Lobbyists that are actively working against us, and when I say they are working against us it's exactly what I mean. They are not sitting on the sidelines watching Armenia and Turkey pocking and pulling each other--they are actually the reason the BIG BLOCK preventing the genocide from passing in USA.
Israel-Turkey are allies and cooperate together on a number of levels. They are also building missiles together. The USA does not deny it happened it just says that is cannot risk damaging ties with its only ally in the region, especially in this dangerous time when it has to deal with the terrorists and so on so forth. The truth is USA does not need Turkey, but there about a zillion reasons why Turkey needs USA.
As for blackmailing, Turkey does quite a bit of that. Turkey threatened France when the latter was taking steps to pass the genocide bill into law and to punish deniers with a fine or short term imprisonment, but the outcome of this was Turkey-France trading gone up.
So the biggest obstacle in USA for Armenian Genocide is indeed the powerful Jewish Lobbyists.
Posted by: Kristine | September 18, 2008 at 01:11 PM
Let us try to re-enact European historical facts: had there never been Christian exterminated in Europe, 564 years ago, then what happened in Armenia to Christians in the 20th Century would have never come to light, as well as what occurred to black Christians of the Americas and West Indies, where they condone the entire affair with four worlds, "We made a mistake!" If God told us to exterminate black Christians in the Americas, then who told us to do it to black mom and dad of European extract 654 years ago with the Black Plague?
Posted by: Albert Franklin | April 27, 2008 at 04:01 PM
This tragedy will be forever in our memory, Bush calling for genocide or not. Human life is not important to him, it is important to the war, weapons and money, as the Turkish government.
Eduardo Raffi Nigoghosian - Armenian Youth Federation - Sao Paulo, Brazil
Posted by: Eduardo Raffi Nigoghosian | April 24, 2008 at 08:03 PM