By Manila Ryce
Published Friday, April 24th, 2009, 3:15 pm
Filed under: Human Rights, World: Asia, Genocide, World Issues, Society/Culture, US Politics

3 Responses to “President Obama Remembers the Armenian Genocide by not Saying the Word “Genocide””

1. Aren’t there practical implications of taking that step as President to call the genocide, just that?
   With the Holocaust, mainstream Germany are in full acceptance of the genocide enacted by their ancestors and it is something that Germans are taught about in school and in many ways taught to feel shame for what their nation did.
   As it stands, the Turkish people who are deeply patriotic and occasionally stubborn are currently unwilling to recognise this. There has been some movement though with the current government attempting to reconcile with Armenia and open up greater trade and diplomatic links and investigate the Armenian genocide. But their patriotism and stubbornness are key factors of alienation for those who do raise it as a genocide and it is easy for them to feel offended at this.
   Perhaps there is more value in drawing Turkey’s own admission of genocide out of them over a period of time than there is in the President of a country 10,000 miles away stating facts he has stated before.
   Genocide is something all states are capable of and all people are capable of participating in under certain conditions. Getting Turkey to recognise not just the genocide, but what created the genocide and then educating their children about it is, for me, a far more effective way of preventing it happen in the future.

   Vey
   04/25/09 at 2:29 am
   
2. 

   @Vey

   Of course there are political implications. The point is that this country 10,000 miles away should not dictate truth to the point where we ourselves are afraid to state it. Getting them to say it was genocide is one thing. Not being able to get our own leader to say it is quite another. Official recognition affects all other institutions in this country. The media especially would start referring to it as genocide as opposed to “an event which Armenians say was genocide”.

   But aside from trickle-down recognition, I am also interested in the immorality of remaining silent. Doctor King said it best: “Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.”

   Manila Ryce
   04/25/09 at 8:02 am
   

3. Not calling the Holocaust a genocide would be something. However, what is referred to as the “Armenian Genocide” by some is far from the Holocaust. I agree that many Armenians died, and even the individuals who are blithely labeled as genocide deniers (e.g. Bernard Lewis, one of the most eminent historians of our time, and the most eminent Islamic historian of the twentieth century) recognize that. Hundreds of thousands died, many civilians.

   Turks did bad things. (But so did Greeks and Bulgars, in true, proven genocides, as well as the Armenians themselves. Genocide requires intent by organizers, not just a bunch of starvation and massacres during wartime!!!!) But to call a deportation which involved large numbers of death a genocide, and especially to compare it to the Holocaust, is an absurdity which just doesn’t mesh with history OR an attempt at truly making evil banal by redefining genocide so as to encompass almost every significant conflict, ever, for both (or all) sides of those conflicts! Just think about it.

   The Armenians in Istanbul and Izmir were left alone — they continued to go to church unbothered throughout the duration of the war. Can you say this for the Jews of Germany during the Holocaust?!?!?! Did the synagogues remain open in Berlin??!?!?!

   How can you compare the two?!?!?!?!

   You need to watch this video: You won’t regret seeing it if you’re a fan of balanced truth. What happened was horrific, but it was certainly no holocaust, and if you call it a genocide, you’ll have to admit that the Turks suffered far worse genocides at the hands of Bulgarians and Greeks, and that the Armenians committed an even worse genocide against the Circassians, and a somewhat middling and blundering one against the Turks which was only truly devastating because of the help of the Russians.

   Are you going to make webpages dedicated to recognizing all of these genocides too??!?!?!

   The first Armenian president would tell you himself that the Armenians were deported because their rebellion left the Turks no choice. Just read his speech before Dashnak (i.e. the Armenian terrorist organization.)

   You’ve got to remember, what’s going on now is a direct continuation of the Armenian plans during WW1. They wanted to attract Western attention. The Turks held back in dealing with the Armenians, even pardoning them after terrorist actions, etc., in order to avoid playing into their trap. They should’ve come down hard earlier. Instead, they let the Armenians muck about until there was no choice but deporation left. It was probably inevitable, though, that the Armenians would side with the Russians and force the hand of the government.

   Why did the deportees who made it to their destination fare so well? Good question, no?

   Did the Jews deported to Poland do well? I recall that they didn’t. Is that right? If that’s so, don’t we see a kind of massive difference between the Jews and the Armenians, between the Turks and Germans?

   How about the Armenians in Istanbul? They did well, no — excepting of course the small number of rebels. They kept going to church, right?

   Did the Jews in Berlin go to synagogue throught WW2? Refresh my memory, please. That’s right — they didn’t. Hmmmmmm……

   The Armenians rebelled even though they knew they had no military might, no majority in the lands they were fighting for, and no military experience. Their plan was to get the help of others, Russians and the West. To get the West’s help, they counted on anti-Turkish hatred.

   They would simply commit acts of terrorism and, later, slaughter Turks in large numbers fighting independently and with the Russian and Russian Armenians, until the Turks were forced to squash the rebellion. Then, they would — by reporting false stories themselves and counting on the bias and Turcophobia of the Western press — simply fill up the Western press with BS. They knew there would be no mention of the equivalently horrible deaths of the Turkish civilians. They knew that the deaths of their civilians would be reported even higher than they actually were.

   The British in particular dedicated themselves to producing propaganda against their Ottoman foes, and a favorite subject was the Armenians. After the war, the worst of the British propagandists ADMITTED HIS PERFIDY AND EXPRESSED HIS REGRET FOR HIS LIES, AND ADMITTED THAT THE ARMENIANS HAD INITIATED THE VIOLENCE IN ANATOLIA. Today, people cite the British and American newspapers as sources on what happened to the Armenians.

   WOULD YOU CITE A JAPANESE NEWSPAPER FROM THE EARLY 1940′S AS A SOURCE ON THE SUPPOSED MORAL DEPRAVITY OF AMERICA’S WAR EFFORT?

   There was no vile plan to purify Turkey for Turks. Turks have always, and remain to this day, been a peculiarly tolerant group as long as the people in question reciprocated and made certain compromises. They welcomed the Jews when Europe wouldn’t have them. They tolerated Christians when the Christians wouldn’t tolerate Muslims in Europe. The Armenians thrived. The Jews thrived. The Greeks thrived.

   Think about it: why wait until such a time — a time in which it was clear that every ounce of energy was needed to try to keep the empire together — to engage in a massive project like getting rid of the Armenians.

   Why would the same people who supposedly wanted these Armenians dead allow the Armenians away from the front to live as usual.

   Why would they put them in high government posts?!?!?!

   The truth is this: they never wanted this. They wanted to avoid it. They knew it would be reported with bias and they would be painted as the bad guys despite the Armenian rebellion. The Armenians rebelled. It was not an excuse to deport, it was the reason to deport.

   And deport meant deport. It never meant kill. The deportees who survived the trip lived. Being deported in a crumbling empire in the midst of a world war is risky business, especially if your people have sided with the enemy. There were slaughters. Almost certainly some deportees were killed by uniformed military. But guess what? That’s not genocide. Americans killed Vietnamese civilians. British killed American civilians. Americans killed German civilians.

   It happens in war.

   What matters is what the government orders — and they ordered protection of deportees. Did it succeed? Not very well, no. Guess what? NEITHER DID THE WAR IN GENERAL. The soldiers were shoeless and starving. How well did you think the deportees would be protected? Those who disobeyed were killed.

   That’s right: they were sentenced to death. Before the end of the war. Before British occupation.

   DID HITLER EXECUTE NAZIS FOR HARMING JEWS??????? Didn’t think so.

   Did the Jews outside of Germany and within Germany conspire to arm the Jewry? Were the Jews in Berlin left untouched during the Holcaust, excepting those that incited the Jews of the provinces to violence? For that matter, were the Jews of the provinces ever incited to violence? Did they ever even engage in significant violence? Did anti-German terrorism aimed at establishing a Jewish state within the borders of Germany occur prior to the Holocaust? Did Jewish violence against Germans precede — 100% — all the anti-Jewish violence in Germany? Was there no history of anti-Jewish violence in Germany?

   WERE THE JEWS DEPORTED TO POLAND SAFE ONCE THEY ARRIVED THERE?

   The answers to these questions are uniformly negative.

   However, the Armenians did all these things which the Jews did not. They initiated the conflict with the Turkish government, there is no question on this matter. Further, there is no question that the Turkish government ordered deportation and protection of deportees. Were they safe? Certainly not. Many were killed by bandits, Turkish and Kurdish by ethnicity. Some were opportunist, but many were taking revenge for the violence perpetrated by the Armenian nationalists.

   The Armenians fought on the side of the Russians. It’s as simple as that. It’s called war. Civilians died in the war. Civilians die in all wars.

   Many civilians died in the war. Hundreds of thousands of Turks died from disease and as a result of the slaughter of Russian and Armenian soldiers. It’s a fact.

   I have personally read one Russian soldier’s diary which contains numerous records of the violence perpetrated by his army, and he made explicit note of the atrocious behavior of the Armenians, and the fact that it exceeded the barbarity of the Russians when it came to slaughtering Turkish civilians, raping the women and children, torturing the men, and engaging in wanton destruction.

   Where is the remembrance day for the hundreds of thousands of dead Turkish civilians, a great number of which died directly at Armenian hands — it’s undeniable, Anatolian Armenians fought with the Russians, and great atrocities were committed against the Turkish populous by these mixed forces — and even more of which died as an indirect result of the Armenian rebellion and the general destruction of Anatolia which it furthered.

   The Russian Armenians brought masses of guns into Anatolia. It’s a fact. The arming continued for years prior to the war. The Turkish government showed massive restraint in dealing with these Armenians during that period even though they were aware that the arming was occurring. This fact was noted by both American and British in the nation at the time. They also noted that the Armenians were bound to force a conflict.

   There is just no question about this: what happened to the Armenians bears almost no resemblance to the Holocaust, and if we are going to call it a “genocide”, then we have bent the definition so far that the majority of wars will involve genocide, and President Obama will need to recognize not only the genocide against the Armenians by the Turks, but also hundreds of more large, documented cases and several thousand genocides of smaller groups.

   The genocide against the Circassians by the Armenians and Russians will be among them. The Russians settled the Armenians on that Circassian (Caucasian) land, and the Armenians were more than happy to help in killing and — lo and behold — forcing the Circassians out of the land.

   Sound familiar? Yeah, there’s one difference. The Circassians weren’t in the midst of a massive armed rebellion, providing assistance to a formidable enemy in a World War, and aiming at taking a majority Russian or majority Armenian land from its people.

   The US will have to start by recognizing the genocide of the myriad groups of native Americans. (These were actual genocides; they fit into the traditional definition of an actual genocide — the definition created by a man who believed all the war propaganda and nonsense about WW1 in Anatolia.)

   The US will certainly have to recognize the genocide against the Turks by the Bulgarians. (20,000 civilians — not part of an armed rebellion that hid amongst civilians or anything like that — killed by being walled up in a fortress and starved to death in one fell swoop, e.g.) This was a real genocide — even by the old definition: there is evidence that they intended to kill all the Turks of Bulgaria, and there are no order to protect deportees or to deport at all.

   (Remember, the trials of the Turks — while the British had complete control of Istanbul and the government — turned up no evidence, despite a serious two-year long search for any such evidence which even went so far as to appeal to the Americans for any evidence, despite the fact that the Americans had never set foot in Ottoman lands during the conflict. The British dearly wanted to find wrong doing, but all the documentation related to Aremenians ordered deportation and protection of deportees. Remember, genocide doesn’t mean civilians were killed or starved. That happens in EVERY significant war. It means that there was an organized effort to kill the civilians by the government/leaders. In Turkey, the Young Turks only ordered protection. On the other hand, the Armenians had armed and began as terrorists with the goal of killing Turks any way they could. The Armenian leadership was on the ground in Anatolia and presided over massacres. The Young Turks in Istanbul let the Armenians in Istanbul and Izmir alone — they continued to go to church unbothered throughout the duration of the war. Can you say this for the Jews of Germany during the Holocaust?!?!?! This was borne out by the fact that the deportees who made it to their destination never perished!!!!!!!)

   The US will certainly have to recognize the genocide against the Turks by the Greeks. (You can read about the song the Greeks liked to sing during their war for independence on Wikipedia.)

   Finally, the US will have to recognize the fact that the Armenians — based on all the evidence we have available — appear to have attempted to kill every Turk — civilian or not — they could get their hands on. The fact is that — despite their best efforts — their abilities and organization were lacking (again, look to the first Armenian Prime Minister for enlightenment) and thus the killing fell short of the other former Ottoman Christians. Still, for the sheer hatred it ran on and, especially, which it inspired, as well as the and the ridiculousness and foolishness of their cause, AND the unbelievable audacity of its modern admirers to seek to continue to abuse its intended victims by making accusation after accusation while never bothering to even spend a moment on their own misdeeds THIS is a genocide to remember!

   Justin
   05/2/09 at 5:52 pm
   

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