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I AGREE WITH DUBYA!

Yes, I know—hell doth freeze over. Despite the circumstances that took us to Iraq, the fact is that we are there now, and must stay or leave with the least amount of additional damage to our people and reputation. The routes for an important amount of the materiel used in the Iraq operation, via sea, air and land, flow through Turkey. Apparently, the continued access to that country seriously is being jeopardized. It all hinges on one, single term: “GENOCIDE”

In 1915, the year after the beginning of World War I, and prior to the creation of Modern-day Turkey in 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred. The Turks claim it was the outcome of war; the Armenians maintain that it was out and out genocide. They appear intent upon never forgetting the horror.

With the increase of the Armenian population in the United States, we see also a proportional increase in their never-waning, group memory of that tragic encounter with the Turks. Apart from their lack of physical consolidation within the U.S., the plight of the Armenians has become somewhat akin to that of the political consolidation that exists among the Cubans in Florida. However, there is a difference between the constant Castro-haters concentrated in Miami and the long-memoried Armenians, widely distributed between both coasts: Whereas the Cubans affect only elections, the unquenchable, anti-Turkish passions of the Armenians now are beginning to affect the security of the United States.

For years there have been unsuccessful legislative proposals to dub the Armenian mass-killings by the Turks as “genocide.” Although it is still to pass muster by the full House of Representatives and ultimately the Senate, recently the House Judiciary Committee did pass an historic, non-binding resolution to the effect that those killings indeed constitute genocide.

Why it should occur to the committee members that this would be an ideal time for such a controversial bill must be lost in the culture of Washington. The Armenians can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists, and Nancy Pelosi has a long-memoried constituency of Armenians in her district. The unfortunate part of this timing is that, if this does pass the full congress, Turkey has threatened to deny us ingress and egress. That would constitute a danger to our security and effectiveness in that land of the Tigris and Euphrates in which we have mired ourselves. Ergo, Dubya is unhappy with the direction of this thing in the congress, as am I.

Now, a word to our tin-eared congress:

• You do not have to travel back to an exotic part of the world to an event that occurred even before the United States became involved in World War I. Our own history is replete with massacres that, in reality, were out and out genocide, clearly perpetrated with the singular purpose of implementing the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States.
• In addition, successive administrations and congresses have failed to deliver on a formal apology for the scourges this country has brought about upon a captive and abused populace.
• Just as a reminder, historically, we never have been kind to anyone possessing any modicum of melanin or out of conformance with arbitrarily imposed standards of gender identification.

So, in order to fill the political desires of people who have transferred their grievances from the Middle East to our shores, do not put at risk our fighting forces and the security of this nation.

Yeah, Dubya, you’re right on this one; I’ve got your back—but just for this one! (Shame on you for vetoing the SCHIP—and many other unconscionable offenses!)

ADDENDUM

Of course, there is more of a dynamic to the Turkey connection:

• Turkey long has salivated for NATO membership. It does not want to do anything to prejudice that coveted status boost.
• Turkey always has been skittish about its sizeable Kurdish contingent, which along with the Iraqi Kurds long has striven for its independent “Kurdistan”—the completion of which aspiration Turkey never will accept, as recent military moves along the Turkey-Iraq border will attest.