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  • Rep. Steve Cohen -- Tennessee's First Jewish Congressman -- Among Th

    REP. STEVE COHEN -- TENNESSEE'S FIRST JEWISH CONGRESSMAN -- AMONG THOSE URGING COLLEAGUES TO BLOCK ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
    By Brantley Hargrove in Congress

    Nashville Scene
    http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2010/03 /rep_steve_cohen_among_those_ur.php
    March 2 2010

    Congressman Steve Cohen, a Democrat whose district includes Memphis,
    is Tennessee's first Jewish congressman. With that in mind, does it
    seem a bit odd to anyone else that, according to a letter to the
    House Foreign Affairs Committee obtained by The Hill, Cohen would
    join Texas' Kay Granger and Kentucky's Ed Whitfield in opposition to
    a House resolution that would recognize as genocide the killing of
    1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during World War I?

    To be fair, Pith isn't sure what to think about these kinds of
    resolutions. Do they really make a difference? Sure, a resolution
    recognizing the innumerable wrongs perpetrated against blacks in
    this country was deserved -- no, required. In fact, Cohen himself
    introduced legislation in the House that would apologize for slavery
    and Jim Crow laws.

    So it seems out of character for a relatively progressive Jewish
    congressman to work to kill a resolution to recognize the wholesale
    slaughter of a people as what it is: genocide. Of course, there are
    a handful of arguable reasons why we shouldn't inflame our Turkish
    allies. For one, an attempt to forge a long-nonexistent relationship
    between Armenia and Turkey is under way, though some Armenian writers
    question the motives underlying it -- possibly pipelines through the
    country to the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea.

    Which leads us into a second reason why certain legislators might
    argue against the resolution: Billions of barrels of oil and trillions
    of cubic meters of natural gas reside in the Caspian Sea region,
    with nothing less than energy security and a pipeline through Turkey
    at stake.

    Last, but almost certainly not least, most of our military shipments
    to Afghanistan and Iraq are funneled through an airbase in Turkey.

    They've threatened to cut our access before -- although it's been
    argued pretty persuasively, in terms of who needs who, that Turkey
    stands to lose more with a souring of Turkish-American relations than
    we do.

    Sure, there are some sensible arguments to be made for abandoning this
    resolution. But then there are men like Iranian President Mahmoud
    Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust ever took place. The question
    is, Congressman Cohen, does refusing to utter the "G" word unanimously
    when speaking of the Armenian genocide amount to the same thing?
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