10-17-07, 9:31 am

The news from Congress this week is grim. Democrats, who previously endorsed a resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire for the Armenian genocide during World War I, are now withdrawing their support. Instead, they going along with the Bush administration’s position that such an endorsement would undermine the US military position in Iraq, where its Turkish NATO ally (which provides a key air and land bridge for US forces) is currently threatening to take military action against Kurdish guerilla forces operating from Iraqi territory in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. Such an appeasement policy is being defended as an unpleasant but necessary action to 'protect our troops.' Thus, the resolution is apparently in serious danger of being tabled.

Along with this very bad news comes another story out of Washington that should surprise no one: the Turkish government has provided former Republican House Speaker-designate Robert Livingston, now a Washington lobbyist, with $12 million dollars in recent years for peddling his influence to block attempts by the US Congress to join many other governments in issuing a formal condemnation of the Armenian Genocide. Livingston was forced to resign from the House in 1999 after revelations of an extramarital affair as he prepared to lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Since then he has set up the Washington lobbying firm The Livingston Group. About 72% of the group's money comes from Turkey. According to the New York Times, Livingston has 'showered money on Democrats and Republicans alike.' Former Democratic House leader Richard Gephardt has also received payments from Livingston via the Turks to defeat amendments on the Armenian genocide.


Will the Turkish government, its well-paid lobbyists, and the Bush administration succeed in blocking a formal condemnation by Congress of the Turkish government’s carefully planned extermination of the Armenian minority during World War I? If so, what will that mean, politically, morally, and ethically for the United States?

First, there is absolutely no doubt that what occurred most dramatically in 1915, and continued throughout the war, was a deliberate policy of mass murder aimed at a religious and ethnic minority, a policy later to be defined as genocide under international law. A summary of historical events (see here and see PA radio episode #41) is based on an extensive literature, most of which comes from non-left scholarly sources, about these historical events. In the language of US law, that the events which occurred constituted genocide is far beyond any reasonable doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The Democrats and Republicans now withdrawing their support from the House resolution condemning the genocide of the Armenian people are all singing the same tune: the events happened nearly a century ago and now is not the right time to deal with them. But the whole purpose of history is not to forget, not to bury the past.

The US government dishonors itself and the American people by not joining in with the more than 20 other nations who have formally condemned the Armenian genocide and braved Turkish government retaliation. Such an appeasement policy in exchange for continued Turkish support for a disastrous occupation in IRAQ makes no sense. Iraq, along with Syria and Palestine, were all colonies of the Ottoman Turkish empire when World War I began, only to be taken over by the British and French empires under bogus League of Nations 'mandates' as part of the spoils of war following Turkey's and Germany's defeat.

At present, the only serious 'ally' the U.S. military has in Iraq is the Kurdish minority in the North, which has been able to establish a substantial amount of autonomy with US aid, and which suffered persecution under the Saddam Hussein regime, just as Kurdish minorities have suffered repression in both Iran and Turkey. It is obtuse, even by Bush administration standards, to believe that appeasing the Turkish government on the question of the Armenian genocide will deter them from taking military action in Kurdish Iraq and creating a serious crisis for the US-established Baghdad regime. Appeasement almost inevitably backfires, in that it encourages aggressors to take actions that the appeasers wanted to prevent.

More importantly, the Turkish government has not addressed the grievances/never adequately addressed the grievances of the Kurdish people living under Turkish control, and successive US governments have done nothing to encourage them to do so.

Our troops are mortally endangered by the impossible situation which the Bush administration has put them in Iraq. The only beneficiaries of the war are the military industrial complex contractors. Occupation contractors in Iraq, in collusion with corrupt Iraqi and US officials, have literally had a license to steal hundreds of billions of dollars, while paramilitary security contractors, such as Blackwater, have had a license to kill. At the same time, the regular troops on the ground, the “volunteer” national guard, wrenched from civilian life, face expanded tours of duty and often lack the necessary supplies to protect themselves. If they do manage to return home, they see their VA benefits gutted.

By contrast, when Generals leave the service and members of Congress are thrown out of office, they become multi-million dollar lobbyists for defense contractors. In that sense, the commanders of US troops in Iraq have a lot in common with lobbyist and former Rep. Robert Livingston. Livingston has certainly emerged from his own scandals with his personal finances enhanced. Today he is sitting pretty as a multimillion-dollar lobbyist running interference for the Turkish government, while a vote on the victims of the Armenian genocide is about to be blocked by those whom Livingston has managed to buy off with Turkish government funds.

Contact your congressional representative and the Democratic House leadership to demand that the Armenian genocide resolution be sustained. The resolution, if it is passed by Congress, would be a statement to the people of the world that 'human rights' is not just a convenient and selective slogan for the US government. It might outrage the present Turkish government. It might outrage the Al Qaeda forces, who would probably call it an example of the US leading a Christian “crusade' against Muslims, but it would be welcomed by the great majority of the world's people, including believing Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., who don't associate their faiths with hatred and murder. They would see it as an affirmation of the United Nations Charter, and a recognition of the fact that one must understand and repudiate the crimes of the past in order not to repeat them.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.