Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Should We Call It Genocide?
The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee has raised the issue of whether to condemn the mass killings of 1 million Armenians, at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, as ‘genocide.’ The issue is being carefully reconsidered because it has created a dispute with Turkey, a key ally to the U.S. in the Middle East. Turkey has continually rejected characterizing this event as genocide and has threatened to end the use of its air bases by the U.S if this vote passes. Furthermore, the Turkish government is considering sending troops into Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels, a move that the U.S. is adamantly against. So, the question remains: Should the U.S. take the moral high ground and condemn the mass killings in 1923 as genocide? Or, should the U.S. look after its national interests and do what pleases Turkey?
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1 comment:
The morally right thing to do would be to acknowledge that this event was in fact a genocide. This is one of the main reasons why genocides continue to occur, because we don't learn from them or aknowledge there occurence. Yes, this event occured over 80 years ago, and an alliance with Turkey may be more important now than aknowledging someting that happened decades ago. But somebody needs to take responisibility for the Armenian genocide. What if 30 years from now the US was confronted with a similar situation where the Germans didnt want to take responisibity for the Holocaust? Would the US allow this because of political pressures? I certainly hope not. After the Holocasut the world said never again, but here we are a few decades later and we have already witnessed the killing of a million people in 100 days in Rwanda, and a genocide in Darfur that occurs right now. Countries need to be held responsible for there actions, or these atrocities will continue
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