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NARCISSISTIC AND RECKLESS ARROGANCE: PELOSI AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
Blogger News Network
Oct 18 2007
There is nothing that so cries out for justice as the forgotten who
are slaughtered and whose deaths are left in thunderous silence of
receding history. The pain for families only barely eases with the
passing of decades or even centuries. This last 150 years has seen
mind-twisting inhumanity. The Holocaust weighs on us with a pressure
that has barely eased since the end of World War II. And yet, in the
same war there was a holocaust visited upon the Serbs, which some Serbs
called a term a stolen holocaust, so little light has ever shone on it.
The massacre of Armenians in 1915, and at other periods after 1885,
is another agony of mass death that is little known to most people.
Taking place during the death throes of the Ottoman Empire, the
slaughter-termed a genocide by the Armenians-has been the subject of
critical debate in the last years. The Turks, descendants of the last
Ottomans and inheritors of their state, argue that Armenian deaths
were the result of civil war, and that there were massive casualties
on both sides. There are reliable contemporary accounts to bolster
both arguments.
On the Ottoman side: According to Bernard Lewis, scion of American
Middle Eastern studies, "What happened to the Armenians was the result
of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks. ... The
massacres were carried out by irregulars, by local villagers responding
to what had been done to them." Dr. Lewis was subsequently charged
with and convicted of denying the genocide by a French court, which
fined him a symbolic one franc.
On the Armenian side: Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire, wrote, in a memoir dated 1919: "When the Turkish
authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely
giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well,
and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt
to conceal the fact." Many of the Armenians died during forced
deportations, deportations now being considered a crime against
humanity.
It's even more complicated than the diametrically opposed viewpoints
of fine historians. When the EU started making noises about demanding
that Turkey "accept responsibility" for the Armenian genocide (which,
in fact, the current country did not commit), Prime Minister Erdogan
asked that the United States and Russia both open their sealed archives
to historical review. Both refused. Complicity on the part of the
United States has been documented to some extent already. But it's the
suspected Russian involvement in Armenian acts of terrorism against
the Ottoman Empire over a period of nearly 80 years that Russians
most certainly don't want exposed. To the casual observer with no
axe to grind, declarations made without access to all the pertinent
archives certain smacks of a railroading for political purposes,
a seeking of illegitimate leverage with half the facts concealed.
But it's worse than that, because the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5
million people may have, doesn't hold a candle to another genocide
happening during the very same time period.
The mass murdering of the Congolese in the Belgian Congo between
1878 and 1910 is a genocide with none of the detractions of the
Armenian-Ottoman tragedy. The death toll is variously placed between
eight and 30 million, depending upon the time period assessed,
and the means of assessment. However, what is certain is that this
genocide was about clearing the Congo of its entire native population,
for the purpose of handing over to Belgian King Leopold II and his
administrators an entire country belonging to other people.[2] Adam
Hochchild's King Leopold's Ghost [3] details this travesty, and Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness provides the visual backdrop of the terror
that was visited upon a completely innocent native population.
However, we don't find the U.S. Congress and Nancy Pelosi banging
on the royal doors of Belgium for an apology to be forwarded to the
descendants of the slaughtered of a black African nation.
Why not? Because there are too few Congolese in Nancy Pelosi's
district. Is that why we find no resolution for the good of the
Congolese, who lost some 5 to 25 times as many people during the same
general time frame? Do they count less because they're black? Do the
Armenians count more because they are white and have many numbers in
Pelosi's district?
Some have suggested that Pelosi's arrogant, reckless act of political
narcissism is something of grand Machiavellian plot: that having been
able to raise no passable resolution to end the Iraq war, she instead
engineered a declaration of genocide against an American ally in order
to elicit Turkey's cutting off America's ability to feed, clothe,
enable with energy, and heal with medicines that routinely make their
way into a war zone from the air bases and protected Kurdish trade
routes through Turkish cities and air fields. If this be true, Nancy
Pelosi is guilty of treason, as well as of usurpation of executive
authority and Congressional authority by manipulation of a house panel.
But the truth is likely both more and less horrifying than this
possibly. Because it is very like that Nancy Pelosi, in her almost
unbested capacity for gross incompetence and mirror-staring, is simply
so foreign-policy ignorant and so utterly incompetent that she actually
tried this bit of grandstanding for Armenian votes in her district-and
publicity, without which she apparently cannot continue to breathe
oxygen for a period of 24 hours.
What needs to happen next is that Nancy Pelosi needs to be removed
as the Speaker of the House by Democrats who would still like to win
the next election.
This toying with the Middle East, as if she had any clue what is
doing, follows on the heels of her hijab-wearing photo-op with Bashir
al-Assad, an egregious blunder that was cheered by al-Jazeera,
al-Arabiya, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hizbollah. Yes, what a
positive movement when women in Saudi Arabia will be charged with
adultery and stoned to death were they to do the same thing. The
Islamists cheered Pelosi's actions as a symbol of their supremacy
over U.S. foreign policy, not as a victory of U.S. attempts to 'win
the hearts and minds.'
Michael Rubin's comments in National Review, in the best article
written on this matter this week,[4] should sober everyone
about Pelosi reckless incompetence. Referencing Pelosi's fawning
visit with al-Assad, he writes: "Basking in the glow of Pelosi's
headline-garnering visit to Damascus - again in contravention of a
State Department request - Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad upgraded
his support for Hezbollah and his nuclear dealings with North Korea."
Pelosi's lust for the power of the presidency or of the entirety of
Congress and not just her individual part must be contained for the
good of the country. For if she had succeeded this week, the cost
of American and Iraqi lives would have been laid securely at her own
feet. She should be grateful the President and the Congress grounded
her little flight toward the sun before her candle-wax wings melted
and caused her crash to be worse even than it is.
Someday, after the Russian and American files are opened, a full
history of the Armenian tragedy should written-by University
professors, not House committees, as Rubin also points out.
And while they are at it, they should have a look at the Belgian
atrocities in The Congo and the extermination of so many of the
world's indigenous populations by European states greedy for wealth
and avaricious for the saving of souls.
But when all of it is said and done, it is a matter for the fullness
of government to decide, not the province of a narcissistic, reckless,
incompetent and dangerous pool-gazer bent on fame and political gain.
Morgaan Sinclair has written for The Weekly Standard and The New York
Post and is a Fellow of Gracen Intelligence
[1] http://serbianholocaust.com/
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
[ 3]
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leo pold-book-review.html
[4]http://article.nationalr eview.com/q=MTMzZjVkNTFjMzg1ZjIwNWFjZTlmMWM2MmQzND ZlMTU=
http://www.bloggernews.net/111019
Blogger News Network
Oct 18 2007
There is nothing that so cries out for justice as the forgotten who
are slaughtered and whose deaths are left in thunderous silence of
receding history. The pain for families only barely eases with the
passing of decades or even centuries. This last 150 years has seen
mind-twisting inhumanity. The Holocaust weighs on us with a pressure
that has barely eased since the end of World War II. And yet, in the
same war there was a holocaust visited upon the Serbs, which some Serbs
called a term a stolen holocaust, so little light has ever shone on it.
The massacre of Armenians in 1915, and at other periods after 1885,
is another agony of mass death that is little known to most people.
Taking place during the death throes of the Ottoman Empire, the
slaughter-termed a genocide by the Armenians-has been the subject of
critical debate in the last years. The Turks, descendants of the last
Ottomans and inheritors of their state, argue that Armenian deaths
were the result of civil war, and that there were massive casualties
on both sides. There are reliable contemporary accounts to bolster
both arguments.
On the Ottoman side: According to Bernard Lewis, scion of American
Middle Eastern studies, "What happened to the Armenians was the result
of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks. ... The
massacres were carried out by irregulars, by local villagers responding
to what had been done to them." Dr. Lewis was subsequently charged
with and convicted of denying the genocide by a French court, which
fined him a symbolic one franc.
On the Armenian side: Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire, wrote, in a memoir dated 1919: "When the Turkish
authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely
giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well,
and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt
to conceal the fact." Many of the Armenians died during forced
deportations, deportations now being considered a crime against
humanity.
It's even more complicated than the diametrically opposed viewpoints
of fine historians. When the EU started making noises about demanding
that Turkey "accept responsibility" for the Armenian genocide (which,
in fact, the current country did not commit), Prime Minister Erdogan
asked that the United States and Russia both open their sealed archives
to historical review. Both refused. Complicity on the part of the
United States has been documented to some extent already. But it's the
suspected Russian involvement in Armenian acts of terrorism against
the Ottoman Empire over a period of nearly 80 years that Russians
most certainly don't want exposed. To the casual observer with no
axe to grind, declarations made without access to all the pertinent
archives certain smacks of a railroading for political purposes,
a seeking of illegitimate leverage with half the facts concealed.
But it's worse than that, because the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5
million people may have, doesn't hold a candle to another genocide
happening during the very same time period.
The mass murdering of the Congolese in the Belgian Congo between
1878 and 1910 is a genocide with none of the detractions of the
Armenian-Ottoman tragedy. The death toll is variously placed between
eight and 30 million, depending upon the time period assessed,
and the means of assessment. However, what is certain is that this
genocide was about clearing the Congo of its entire native population,
for the purpose of handing over to Belgian King Leopold II and his
administrators an entire country belonging to other people.[2] Adam
Hochchild's King Leopold's Ghost [3] details this travesty, and Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness provides the visual backdrop of the terror
that was visited upon a completely innocent native population.
However, we don't find the U.S. Congress and Nancy Pelosi banging
on the royal doors of Belgium for an apology to be forwarded to the
descendants of the slaughtered of a black African nation.
Why not? Because there are too few Congolese in Nancy Pelosi's
district. Is that why we find no resolution for the good of the
Congolese, who lost some 5 to 25 times as many people during the same
general time frame? Do they count less because they're black? Do the
Armenians count more because they are white and have many numbers in
Pelosi's district?
Some have suggested that Pelosi's arrogant, reckless act of political
narcissism is something of grand Machiavellian plot: that having been
able to raise no passable resolution to end the Iraq war, she instead
engineered a declaration of genocide against an American ally in order
to elicit Turkey's cutting off America's ability to feed, clothe,
enable with energy, and heal with medicines that routinely make their
way into a war zone from the air bases and protected Kurdish trade
routes through Turkish cities and air fields. If this be true, Nancy
Pelosi is guilty of treason, as well as of usurpation of executive
authority and Congressional authority by manipulation of a house panel.
But the truth is likely both more and less horrifying than this
possibly. Because it is very like that Nancy Pelosi, in her almost
unbested capacity for gross incompetence and mirror-staring, is simply
so foreign-policy ignorant and so utterly incompetent that she actually
tried this bit of grandstanding for Armenian votes in her district-and
publicity, without which she apparently cannot continue to breathe
oxygen for a period of 24 hours.
What needs to happen next is that Nancy Pelosi needs to be removed
as the Speaker of the House by Democrats who would still like to win
the next election.
This toying with the Middle East, as if she had any clue what is
doing, follows on the heels of her hijab-wearing photo-op with Bashir
al-Assad, an egregious blunder that was cheered by al-Jazeera,
al-Arabiya, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hizbollah. Yes, what a
positive movement when women in Saudi Arabia will be charged with
adultery and stoned to death were they to do the same thing. The
Islamists cheered Pelosi's actions as a symbol of their supremacy
over U.S. foreign policy, not as a victory of U.S. attempts to 'win
the hearts and minds.'
Michael Rubin's comments in National Review, in the best article
written on this matter this week,[4] should sober everyone
about Pelosi reckless incompetence. Referencing Pelosi's fawning
visit with al-Assad, he writes: "Basking in the glow of Pelosi's
headline-garnering visit to Damascus - again in contravention of a
State Department request - Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad upgraded
his support for Hezbollah and his nuclear dealings with North Korea."
Pelosi's lust for the power of the presidency or of the entirety of
Congress and not just her individual part must be contained for the
good of the country. For if she had succeeded this week, the cost
of American and Iraqi lives would have been laid securely at her own
feet. She should be grateful the President and the Congress grounded
her little flight toward the sun before her candle-wax wings melted
and caused her crash to be worse even than it is.
Someday, after the Russian and American files are opened, a full
history of the Armenian tragedy should written-by University
professors, not House committees, as Rubin also points out.
And while they are at it, they should have a look at the Belgian
atrocities in The Congo and the extermination of so many of the
world's indigenous populations by European states greedy for wealth
and avaricious for the saving of souls.
But when all of it is said and done, it is a matter for the fullness
of government to decide, not the province of a narcissistic, reckless,
incompetent and dangerous pool-gazer bent on fame and political gain.
Morgaan Sinclair has written for The Weekly Standard and The New York
Post and is a Fellow of Gracen Intelligence
[1] http://serbianholocaust.com/
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
[ 3]
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leo pold-book-review.html
[4]http://article.nationalr eview.com/q=MTMzZjVkNTFjMzg1ZjIwNWFjZTlmMWM2MmQzND ZlMTU=
http://www.bloggernews.net/111019