Armenian Genocide

Keep in mind that I am against the war, and always vote for Democrats.

Speaker Peolsi seems to think that now is a good time to alienate a necessary ally of ours in the Middle East, Turkey. Apparently in 1915, the old Ottoman Turkish Empire killed millions of Armenians in an act of genocide as an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Sort of like the Nazis did to the Jews and like several other countries have done at various times in history. The Ottomans were overthrown by what is now the ruling group. But the current powers that be in Turkey reject the notion that there was a Genocide. They say it was a war. So I don't get why they don't just say "yeah, it was a genocide, that's why we kicked those other guys out". But OK they deny it. This is clearly wrong, and they ought to take the high road like Germany and admit the past is true and move on to the future. Nobody wants to hold anything against Turkey now for what they've done. We just want to call a spade a spade.

But now? Turkey has said that they'd get really mad at us if we do this. They have made it sound as though they might even go so far as to kick us out of their coutnry, which we're using as a stopping point on the way to the "War on Terror". I think people are even saying that they'll increase aggression on Kurds in Iraq if we do this to them. But Pelosi says "let's do it now". I heard in passing that she made some sort of promise that if it got past committee that she'd move forward with it. So maybe she's just stuck in a promise. Now wouldn't that be nice? A Politician keeping a promise that is hard to keep.

But still this seems to be another way the Dems are trying to be passive-agressive at stopping the war. First was the thing saying that troops had to either limit their tour length, or have a minimum off-tour interval (I can't remember which), which was clearly a way to force a drawdown of troops. Now this - if we can't work out of Turkey, it could threaten our Iraq operations and even create another front of conflict. (I actually heard someone call it a "second front" but I think we already have about 32 fronts going at once).

So while I want to call it a Genocide, do we really have to pass a resolution to make it official right now? But at the same time, if you can do something now, why not do it now? And if Pelosi promised she would, then she should also hold that promise. I just don't want to put at risk the lives of soldiers over politics. But I guess that's what Bush did when he started this war.