Why Now?

But back to the Armenian question, the real questions are "is it our place to do this" and "are we ever going to do this?"

On the second question, Turkey is an friendly nation and there will always be a reason not to poke them in the eye. Reagan did it when he labeled it a genocide in the 80's during the cold war and everyone got over it. If Congress passes this, Turkey will be pissed for a while (a couple of months) and then everyone will get over it. Bush is hosting the Dali Lama today, something that pushes China's buttons a lot more than the Armenian genocide does to Turkey. China considers the DL to be the leader of an active separtist movement. Doesn't the same argument hold for China? Don't we need them to help resolve the N. Korean nuclear issue? Wouldn't it be better to wait there as well? Pelosi makes has a point when she says there will never be a good time to do something like this.

For the first question, we have a lot of baggage in our past, but I do see some validity is saying that it might take us 100 years, but we will eventually call it as we see it. Hopefully, we'll call the next genocide early enough to do something about it.

This may be tough for us cynics to take, but maybe it is just idealism. Maybe the real reason is that there are some in both parties that just hate it that one million people were killed and no one is willing to say "yes, this was a genocide." No one is assigning blame since the Ottoman Empire is long gone, no one is demanding reparations, this really isn't going to be a big deal after New Year's Day. Maybe it is just a statement of principle. It certainly has generated conversation and brought this event back into the spotlight, if only for a few weeks.

I think the resolution can be postponed again...unless Nancy's plan is to choke the Iraq operation down. Everything happens in her arena for political reasons...what other motive could she have

That is what mystifies me why any Jewish American would vote Democratic?

The regional concentration of the resolution's co-sponsors does suggest the work of successful community lobbying resp. the influence of a coveted constituency electorate.

Most notably, of the 225 co-sponsors of the House resolution, a full 49 are from California - or in other words, only 4 Californian Congressmen in the House did not co-sponsor it.


Compare how the Wikipedia page about Armenians in the United States says:

Quote:

California hosts the largest Armenian-American population. [..] The largest concentration of Armenian-Americans is located in Glendale, California, where 26.2% of residents identified themselves as Armenian on the 2000 US Census.

Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews
Raised in Turkey, Hovannes Minasian, center, was among many Armenians attending the town meeting in Lexington.

with armenians belonging to no one political party (just like any other group), the only thing partisan about this issue is the ceaseless bitching and complaining by the usual suspects any time a democrat dares to draw a breath.

GENOCIDE FOLLIES

Minor thing, but as a semi-expert on the congressional Armenian genocide debate I was startled to hear Tom Tancredo interject and ridicule the genocide resolution as a stupid idea.

He descibed the resolution as "pandering for votes" and derided Nancy Pelosi for her "complete ignorance of the foreign policy implications of doing such a thing."

Reasonable people will perhaps side with Tancredo here--though maybe less so if they knew that, until a couple of weeks ago, Tancredo himself was a co-sponsor of the resolution.

jesus

The Dems were so worried about distabilizing the ME and causing havoc. If that were the case then how come they went and did something stupid like this?

Turkey is gearing up to move into northern Iraq. Who is going to stop Turkey? Will that be up to the US or is some other country going to try? Will more action in the ME mean other countries will get involved? What did the Dems think was going to happen when they passed this. Remember they control the house, not the Reps. If they thought this was a bad idea then they should have had the votes to kill it. This is going to be an intresting next few weeks. Hope you Dems out there like what you started.

It was contained to Iraq and Afghanistan now its going to spread!

The Dems were so worried about distabilizing the ME and causing havoc. If that were the case then how come they went and did something stupid like this?

...

It was contained to Iraq and Afghanistan now its going to spread!