I have few Armenian friends and have heard a few second-hand stories about how various people survived the genocide in 1915. So, of course I believe it was a real event and as significant as the Holocaust. But I'm not sure if I'm missing Buchanan's point here. He has typically been against the expansion of the role of the U.S. military in the world, but he doesn't make that point here. He mostly condemns the democrats for pushing this resolution at a very critical time for what is likely nothing more than pandering for donations.
I agree with him that Turkey has been a very good ally to the U.S. and that the democrats are demonstrating their tin ear for world diplomacy (not that the neo-cons have fared much better in this decade). But if he is suggesting that we should continue to help out Turkey and reward them as allies, that seems to counter his usual sentiments arguing against the war in Iraq and the expansion of the U.S. military to every corner of the world now that the Cold War has ended.
Here are my points for what they are worth:
- I'm not a big fan of government doing anything it isn't expressly authorized to do. The passage of a measure like this, while the subject is obviously serious, strikes me as being about as useless as national broccoli awareness week or the 10,000 other resolutions passed by Congress. If the Armenian Genocide becomes an important issue in one context or another that involves the federal government, then by all means talk about it. Resolutions of this type which don't serve any purpose strike me as the worst sort of pandering. We should make sure it's in the history books, but what role the federal government should play in that is likely none.
- I agree with Pat that this is likely going to cause us a lot of trouble with Turkey when we really can't afford it. Ironically, perhaps, the Kurds were also implicated in helping the Turks carry out the Genocide. They should probably also be included in any resolution. Even if they are not, they are likely to feel the negative consequences of it's passage when Turkey invades northern Iraq.
- As long as we are a world of nation-states, I accept whole-heartedly the notion that national borders should be drawn along current ethnic and cultural lines for historic ethnic groups (multi-cultural nations such as the U.S. excepted). As such, I think that there should be a Kurdistan and that the northeast quadrant of Turkey should go to Armenia while the southeast should go to an independent Kurdistan.
- That being said, if you look at an ethnic map of the Middle East, you will see that Iraq, Turkey, and especially Iran, are such hodge-podges of different ethnic groups that it's any wonder they should be single nations at all. The fact that we are now being steadily drawn into a conflict that resulted from the failure to create an independent Kurdistan in 1921 just goes along with my overall thesis that the U.S. just needs to stop intervening in the world, period, unless our safety is directly (directly) threatened. Otherwise, we wind up with the current mess we are in with Iraq and the likely messes that will arise with Turkey and Iran in the next six months to a year.
- I would be more than happy to lose Turkey as an ally if it also meant we would be gone from intervening in the Middle East for good.
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