Pelosi's an idiot.
Genocide Resolution Losing Steam
CAPTAIN ED
By Ed Morrissey on War on Terror
The bill condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915 has begun to lose support and may not have enough Democrats on board to pass. A group of Democrats will hold a press conference later today asking House leadership to table the motion in light of the disastrous impact it might have on our military efforts in Iraq and our relationship with the one Muslim democracy in the Middle East:
Worried about antagonizing Turkish leaders, House members from both parties have begun to withdraw their support from a resolution supported by the Democratic leadership that would condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians nearly a century ago.
Almost a dozen lawmakers had shifted against the measure over the last 24 hours, accelerating a sudden exodus that has cast deep doubt over the measure's prospects. Some representatives made clear that they were heeding warnings from the White House, which has called the measure dangerously provocative, and from the Turkish government, which has said House passage would prompt Turkey to reconsider its ties to the United States, including logistical support for the Iraq war.
Until today, the resolution appeared to be on a path to House passage, with strong support from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California. It was approved last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But this evening, a group of group of senior House Democrats had made it known they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure.
Most of the waverers believed in the validity of the resolution, but have concluded that the timing was not right, given the logistical considerations of the war. Some of the bill's supporters rejected that argument as well as the notion that it would impact our friendship with Turkey. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked when it had become "fashionable for friends to threaten friends," implying that Turkey's objections amounted to extortion.
That seems rather ludicrous, since we're asking them to support a war effort that has been very unpopular in their own country, and one that has energized the restive Kurdish population in Turkey. They have proven their friendship for the last few years, even if they didn't like the last-minute request to stage an invasion through that same territory. This isn't the equivalent of France refusing us airspace to bomb Libya in the mid-1980s in response to Ghaddafi's terrorist attack. Turkey has remained cooperative with us on Iraq despite heavy domestic opposition.
The critics are standing on the wrong ground for the right reasons, anyway. First, the nation of Turkey didn't commit the genocide, and the amateur historians of Congress have indicted the wrong government. The Ottoman Empire conducted the genocide eight years before the establishment of Turkey -- and the two are not the same country at all. The genocide occurred in 1915, when the Ottomans got dragged into World War I through their military alliance with Germany. The Ottoman Empire got dismembered in the Versailles Treaty after 700 years of existence, during which they conducted more than a few ethnic and sectarian actions on their own people.
It would be akin to blaming the United States for the Salem witch trials, or the French & Indian Wars of the mid-eighteenth century.
Second, the business of Congress isn't to make sweeping historical indictments, regardless of whether they have their information correct or not. This Congress hasn't even produced its first funding bill for FY2008, even though we are now at Day 17 of the calendar. Instead of issuing resolutions about the real or imagined crimes of a government from 90 years ago, it should be focusing on meeting its Constitutional obligations now. It's not the timing of the bill that's objectionable as much as it is the waste of time it represents for a Congress that has much more pressing business on its agenda.
I understand the Armenian-American community's passion to see the genocide recognized, but this is the wrong forum as well as the wrong time. Congress has more important work to do, and our troops need the logistical support more than the Armenian-Americans need a Congressional resolution that will change no minds at all. |
