Over 60 Members of Congress, led by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking for clarification on reports of U.S. Ambassador to Armenian John Evans’ recall over his forthright remarks about the Armenian Genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).On the diplomatic level, this cowardly act sends a strong message of weakness, which is the only kind Bush can send of late. Clinton should make another trip, and this time take Bush along.
The Administration has recalled Amb. Evans over his February 2005 statements at Armenian American community functions, during which he properly characterized the Armenian Genocide as ‘genocide.’ Following his statements, Amb. Evans was apparently forced to issue a statement clarifying that his references to the Armenian Genocide were his personal views and did not represent a change in US policy. He subsequently issued a correction to this statement, replacing a reference to the genocide with the word “tragedy.” The American Foreign Service Association, which had planned to honor Amb. Evans with the “Christian A. Herter Award,” recognizing creative thinking and intellectual courage within the Foreign Service, reportedly rescinded the award following pressure from the State Department a few days before Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Washington, DC to meet with President Bush.
Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.
Crossposted at The Dougout
Update, 5/28: Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has posted on our leaders' ongoing refusal to identify the enemy, which includes this statement:
And now that the same madness is reflected in the State Department. Had Ambassador John Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia who was fired for referring to the Armenian genocide, not been forced to apologize for speaking the truth, had he not been forced to resign, had Turkish protests been met with steely indifference, it would have been good for American relations with Turkey. The Turks must in any number of ways be made to realize that a series of events has demonstrated that Turkey is not the ally that the United States thought it was....
It was important to signal to both Armenia and Turkey that the genocide would be called what it is. It was important for Ambassador Evans to be celebrated. It was even more important to begin to tell the Turkish government and people that they have to face up to this history, and in so doing, should put the blame right where it belongs: not on some fault inherent in Turks, but on Islam, which made Muslim Turks willing to massacre Christian Armenians whom they deemed in violation of their dhimma. In that way, secularist Turks can claim that in taming or distancing themselves from Islam, they have tried to tame the ideological source for those mass murders in 1894-96 and then the later genocide (in its intent and scope, by many of those involved) of 1915-1920.
Read the whole thing.
3 comments:
Unbelievable. Just think what we would do if Germany began denying the Holocaust.
For God's sake! Our own State Department is supporting revisionist history?
Well, of course. Why would they want the full history to come to light? The US along with many European nations were tacitly complicit in the genocides in Asia Minor. Standard Oil among others was cozying up (throught the US Department of State, who had AMBASSADORS IN ASIA MINOR during the entire crisis!!) to Ataturk's fledgling government and everyone wanted a piece of Turkiye.
Never forget, the warships sat in Smyrna harbor in 1922 watching the burning of the city and the slaughter going on. The British seamen poured boiling water on swimmers trying to reach the ships for safety. The US revoked any rights of citizenship for any naturalized American citizens from Asia Minor who had returned to try to aid relatives.
The list of crimes goes on, and if they admit to the genocides and the whole campaign of the Young Turks then everyone knows that they were there ignoring it all. People know anyway, it's rather public knowledge. It is the lack of focus on the subject which keeps this all under wraps.
The slogan, though in Klingon, er, I mean Turkish, was "Turkey for the Turks". They put everyone through this. And for the record, I know that this is always referred to as "The Armenian Genocide", and they were in fact one group of the victims. But so were the inland Pontic Greeks and the Assyrians who were slaughtered and put on similar death marches with little chance of escaping due to their geographic position (for a harrowing 1st hand account from a Pontic see Thea Halo's book Not Even My Name). My ancestors, the Ionian Greeks have been almost erased from history. They had a better chance for escape due to their living on the coast near the many islands and the rest of Greece. However, many of my relatives were murdered by Turks at this time. I'm merely the descendant of the ones who got away. I refer to this as the Genocides of the Young Turks or of Asia Minor personally, but it really strikes at the heart to think of the Armenians BARELY being remembered, while the other 4 groups targeted are not even MENTIONED. VDH in Between War and Peace mentioned the Ionians. He's a rare exception.
Understand my terseness here, these were my relatives. I know their names and the dates that some of them were bayonetted or shot to death. I know now who made it out and who didn't in my family and in others'. And as for the US resisting this move, they don't want to show their allegiance to a Turkey that was doing this or to lose what's left of an ally in the region. And having a Rockefeller still in the Senate can't be helping matters.
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