Today President Bush urged a House Foreign Affairs Committee to vote against classifying the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire—the modern country of Turkey—as a genocide.While the World War I-era massacre is widely viewed by scholars and historians as the 20th century’s first genocide, the president cited political convenience as his primary reason for being against the resolution. “It’s passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror,” said the president.
If the unflattering resolution passes, the Turkish government has let it be known they would have to rethink allowing the US military presence in Iraq to use Turkish airspace. The move could also further destabilize Iraq, particularly the Kurdish regions in the north.
Also, in an unforeseen but related move, the President applauded a congressional push to re-label the Holocaust of World War II as an “Involuntary Summer Camp” program.
“Holocaust,” stated Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, “is just such a loaded term.”
“Its got a lot of emotional baggage attached to it, and there are more potential German investors than ever these days. I mean, we don’t want to step on any toes,” said the President.
Ros-Lehtinen added her opinion, saying that “the Germans are, quite frankly, sick of the stigma. Plus, they make these little liqueur-filled bottles of chocolate that are just soooooo good. We can’t afford sanctions on those.” The ranking Republican member of the committee also noted that “the best move on genocides in general is to just forget the whole thing happened. These people, the Armani…wait…Armenians! That’s it. They’ve just got to move on with their lives.”
President Bush was very careful to make the distinction that, while he was still against genocide per se, the current extenuating circumstances had forced his hand.
“Things like ‘truth’ and ‘what really happened’ are just going to have to take a backseat until we win this fuckin’ thing,” noted the president, as he made “finger quotes” in the air for added emphasis.
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1 response so far ↓
1 hoshofburden // Oct 12, 2007 at 9:55 am
If you want a real look into the Armenian genocide, check out the film “Ararat”. I saw it last year with my brother in law (who’s Armenian), and it was pretty moving.
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