Why did H.Res. 252 get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks. Or at least that's how they'd prefer it. An update on this story. "US administration to block vote on Turkey 'genocide'," from BBC News, March 5:
The Obama administration has said it will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks.
A congressional panel on Thursday approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House.
But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration would "work very hard" to prevent this.
Turkey voiced strong protests after the vote and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country had been accused of a crime it did not commit, adding the resolution would harm Turkish-US relations.
President Abdullah Gul said Turkey - a key Nato ally of the US - would "not be responsible for the negative results that this event may lead to".
Change of position
Mr Clinton - who had urged the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to hold the vote - said on Friday: "We are against this decision. Now we believe that the US Congress will not take any decision on this subject." [...]
During his campaign for the 2008 election, Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide.
Mrs Clinton has acknowledged his administration's change of opinion on the issue, saying circumstances had "changed in very significant ways".
So now it wasn't a genocide?
In October last year, Turkey and Armenia signed a historic accord normalising relations between them after a century of hostility.
Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide, but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.
How can a president "block" a House resolution? Hasn't Obama heard of the doctrine of "Separation of Powers?" Perhaps Legislative branch of government should tell the Executive branch to bug off, and if it persists establish a commission to start laying the groundwork for impeachment.
I haven't seen comment anywhere on the degree to which the Turkish position might be inextricably intertwined with the role that Kemal Ataturk played in the Armenian genocide.
Anyone care to comment on this?
The significant change? The election is over...
'What is said in the campaign, stays in the campaign.'
He doesn't need the Armenian American votes, right now. He'll make another promise prior to the next election.
Do you think he'll apologize to Turkey for them committing genocide, or just for the US for having the bad taste to mention it?
replied to comment from Eastview | March 5, 2010 4:15 PM | Reply Oops - wrong link. The correct one is
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/kemal.html
My apologies
What an unbelievable flake! Is he capable of following thru with anything he promised? I cannot remember the last president who was as out-of-touch as this guy clearly is. He'll sell out anyone and anything for the sake of political expediency. I was very young at the time and don't remember, but I doubt that even Dhimmi Carter was this horrendous this early into his term.
Eastview,
The resolution only passed committee. Obama's plan is to twist Democratic arms so it will not pass in the full House.
There is a confusion here, on the part of various Turkish spokesmen. The vote in the American Congress does not create, or uncreate, a fact, but recognizes it. The burden is on Turkey, to somehow begin to stop the nonsense usually offered when the subject of the Armenian massacres comes up. It could, as I have elsewhere suggested, stop the business of this "occurred in wartime" because that simply does not wash as an alibi. Why not? Because more than 100,000 Armenians were killed in the massacres of 1894-96, and the accounts that were published in this country at the time, with the eyewitness testimony of, among others, American missionaries then present in Turkey, made clear that this was Muslims killing Christians because they felt that the Christians were now insufficiently submissive -- because, ever since the so-called Tanzimat reforms of 1839, the Ottoman government had at least cosmetically been attempting, in order to minimize pressure from the European powers, to issue firmans that suggested non-Muslims would be given something like legal equality. It never happened, but the ensuing Muslim fury was expressed, for example, in the massacre of Maronites in Damascus in 1860.
Turkey, of course, contains many more erdogans than it does orhan-pamuks. And we can't expect much, because always and everywhere, the primitives outnumber the enlightened. But that is no reason for certain truths not to be stated, by the American Congress. Or by the French Assembly, which passed a similar resolution, and one does not see France suffering too terribly from Turkish retaliation. Or by anyone at all, who cares to study the matter.
.
"During his campaign for the 2008 election, Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide."
One more in a long litany of broken promises.
"Hope and change?"....my ass.