IN THEORY:Should U.S. recognize Armenian ‘genocide’?

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) recently sponsored a nonbinding resolution calling on the president to recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenians at the end of World War I as genocide. Some political observers say it could seriously rupture U.S.-Turkish relations and lead Turkish leaders to withdraw military support in Iraq because Turkey insists that the deaths were not genocide but a consequence of the Ottoman Empire splintering apart. Others argue that it’s time for America to put truth ahead of politics. In the past, similar resolutions have been shot down, but with the Democratic majority in Congress it has a chance to finally reach President Bush’s desk. Do you think the U.S. should go on record recognizing it as genocide?

Rep. Adam Schiff’s efforts to have President Bush recognize the Armenian genocide are deeply commended. However, a similar bill a few years ago was placed on former President Clinton’s desk, but, unfortunately, and to our disappointment, he refused to sign for “American security concerns.” Armenians will never give up hope on this very important issue and pray that this time around it will succeed.

Some, here and abroad, think the whole world will collapse and America’s relationship with Turkey will be in total disaster the day our president accepts and declares the mass killings of Armenians before, during and after 1915 in Turkey as genocide. I don’t share this concern. Dozens of countries in the world have done so, and nothing seems to have happened. The world is still here.

I think our government and the Bush administration should strongly persuade and invite Turkey to come to terms with its sad and dark chapter. Economic, political and military considerations are much more outweighed by justice, truth, democratic principles and values. This is what America stands for. We should not be intimidated or bullied, or allow our values to be compromised for profit and gain.

Last month’s assassination in Istanbul of Hrant Dink, the prominent editor in chief of the Armenian newspaper Agos, made the phrase “Armenian genocide” a household phrase in Turkey. Dink was a torchbearer of truth, justice and recognition of Armenian genocide. It is no longer a taboo phrase. I hope that the recognition and acceptance of the Armenian genocide will someday happen in Turkey. It is only a matter of time.

Is the Armenian genocide important for us, as Americans, in this critical time? Well, the former dictator of Iraq was recently tried and hanged in Iraq. Why? For having killed 140 people who tried to revolt against him. What was he guilty of? Genocide! Yes, genocide, for having killed only 140 (we know he killed many, many more). By direct order of the Turkish-Ottoman government, 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated. We are still waiting for justice. I believe with the help of truth, justice and peace-loving people here and in Turkey, final justice will be done for our innocent victims. And the world will still be here!

FATHER MOUSHEGH TASHJIAN

Pastor

St. Mary

Armenian Apostolic Church

Costa Mesa

During Princeton professor Bernard Lewis’s recent appearance at my synagogue, I asked this scholar of the Middle East about his refusal to label as genocide the 1915 Turkish slaughter of Armenians.

Lewis said that to equate the deaths of Armenians to Hitler’s Holocaust was unjustified, even absurd. The Armenians rose in armed force against the Turks before the onset of World War I. During the war, many Armenians crossed the frontier, allying themselves with Russian troops invading Turkey. The professor told me that Armenian guerrillas conquered cities with the goal of transferring them to Russian authority. He concluded there is no substantiation that a policy to annihilate the Armenians was in place. “To make this a parallel with the Holocaust in Germany, you would have to assume the Jews of Germany had been engaged in an armed rebellion against the German state, collaborating with the allies against Germany.”

I am a strict constructionist of words. To apply “genocide” — the systematic obliteration of a racial, political, cultural or religious group — to the Armenian experience attests to the poverty of language.

German historian Eberhard Jackel terms the Holocaust “a historical singularity.” His conclusion is validated in the Holocaust’s unmatched application of technology to death. The killers were not dispatched arbitrarily to the victims, but the victims were transported to the killers, with the sole intention of murdering them “cleanly,” resourcefully, methodically and with obsessive concern for cost-effectiveness. “The Nazis,” Charles Krauthammer said, “constructed an industry of death never before — or since — seen: an industry of continental size, complete with railways, death camps, gas chambers and crematoria; an industry whose raw material was Jews and whose product was corpses.”

Melanie Phillips writes: “It was only the Jewish people who were specifically singled out for the extermination of an entire race. Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally handicapped people and others were murdered too, and we should remember that. But the Nazis did not try to chart every last great-aunt by marriage who might have been a Gypsy, homosexual or mentally handicapped person in order to remove all those groups from the face of the earth; that terrible fate was reserved for the Jews alone. It was not merely people who were being exterminated, but a people.”

The Holocaust was not one genocide among others. It is the extermination camp that renders the Holocaust sui generis, an infinite beastliness that permits no analogy.

When Hitler revealed the Final Solution to his general staff, he spoke contemptuously of possible world condemnation: “Who remembers the Armenians?” The massacre of Armenians was a hideous prototype for Hitler’s designs, but Turkey did not initiate a state-sponsored program to murder every single Armenian because they were Armenian.

Unlike any other event to which it might be spuriously compared, the Holocaust sought the extermination of Jews not because of the politics they espoused, the land they occupied, a refusal to assimilate into the broader culture, or the military threat they posed — but for one crime alone: They existed.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

Yes, the U.S. should officially acknowledge that the killing of Armenians in 1915 was an act of genocide. U.S.-Turkish relations should not be used to justify collusion in the cover-up by remaining silent. Witnessing and remembrance play an important role in bringing about justice and healing, in honoring the dead and in preventing future genocide. The United Human Rights Council works to correct violations of governments like Turkey who “distort, deny and delude their own history to disguise past and present genocides, massacres and human rights violations.”

Of course, we must also look at genocide and human rights violations, past and present, within our own borders. The Indian Wars, which decimated the population of indigenous peoples, are often viewed collectively as genocide. We are uneasy being reminded of massacres and slavery, especially when we know injustice persists. We also know that genocide is going on right now in places like Darfur, and we are not sure what to do about it.

The history of genocide in the past 100 years, from 1915 to the present, is more extensive than we may realize: Croatia, Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, Imperial Japan, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), the Soviet Union, Communist China, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodia, East Timor under Indonesian occupation, Sabra-Shatila, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tibet, West New Guinea, Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan.

Why pass a resolution? What can it accomplish? Genocide develops in eight stages, according to Gregory Stanton, the president of Genocide Watch. In the last stage, the perpetrators typically deny that any crime was committed. Dividing people into “us” and “them” is the very first step in the development of genocide. In the third stage, the dehumanization of the victims serves to overcome the normal revulsion against murder.

The spiritual teachings of all of the world’s religions agree about the universal, humanitarian values that transcend these divisions between people and which uphold the dignity of every human being. Congressional resolutions, publicity and debate help to strengthen and spread these essential values.

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

Somehow, the U.S. government seems to be between a rock and a hard place in how best to handle relations with Turkey and satisfy the Americans of Armenian descent that are demanding that the 1915 genocide be acknowledged. But having to ignore the truth and overlook some of Turkey’s ridiculous laws, which criminalize truth-seekers and prosecute even novelists who depict characters mentioning the Armenian genocide, seems too much of a price to pay in order to maintain Turkey’s support in Iraq.

Since more than 80% of the Turks, rightly or wrongly, already disapprove of U.S. policies, how much more harm can it do to call a spade a spade, and use the G-word in relation to what happened to the Armenian Christians during the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire? Whether the total number of Armenians killed at the time was around 1.5 million, as most authorities agree, or only 300,000 as Turkey now claims — and only as a result of civil strife — is hard for us to know for sure, but judging on how governments tend to fudge data for the best appearance, we can be assured that publicized information from most governments gets Tony Snow-jobbed a bit, if not a lot worse. For instance, our government seems to really low-ball the number of civilian Iraqi deaths that our war has caused as collateral damage, among other things.

But, golly gee, 1915 was a long time ago, and no one in the current Turkish government had anything to do with either the collapse of the Ottoman Empire or the genocide of the Armenians, so why are they so sensitive about the use of the G-word and simple discussions of history?

JERRY PARKS

Member

Humanist Assn. of Orange County

It would appear counterproductive to awaken the old wounds of such a horrible tragedy. Recognizing the records of genocide and asking for some kind of acceptance of responsibility seems reasonable, but unlikely — especially from two groups who still have a significant amount of animosity? I’m not sure why Rep. Adam Schiff feels so inclined to have this resolution passed, other than he might have a number of Armenians in his district. Perhaps a resolution worded in a manner that didn’t blame but rather forgave would be better. Genocide is bad, no matter who perpetrated the act. I would rather see Schiff focus on the genocide in Darfur and pass a binding resolution that might help those who need the help right now. We can’t make history go away, but we can be responsible for who we are and how we behave in this moment.

PASTOR JIM TURRELL

Center for Spiritual Discovery

Costa Mesa

Honesty in politics is long, long overdue. The international legal definition of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Consensus among historians, journalists and politicians (including President Bush in his 2000 campaign) is that what happened in 1915 meets this definition.

Beloveds of St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church, who worshiped here before they established their own sanctuary in Costa Mesa, shared their families’ stories with us. The truth must be told.

Thinking about such events, words from Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side” leap to mind. Dylan sings that both victims and perpetrators of atrocities in conflicts, ranging from those of millennia past to our own Civil War to both World Wars to the Cold War, have “God on their side” ultimately because of forgiveness.

I hope all resolutions recognizing past brutalities will include statements of forgiveness, as surely God has offered forgiveness. Redemptive forgiveness and reconciliation in relationships are most likely to effect Dylan’s conclusion, “If God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war.”

(THE VERY REV’D CANON) PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

Every historian would agree, I think, that history is a kind of research or inquiry. We ask questions and try to answer them about people and about nations. Case in point, did this genocide really occur? All history begins from the knowledge of our own ignorance. When we learn by knowing the facts, it can only help our present and our future. George Santayana’s axiom is quite clear: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Another expression comes to mind: “The truth will set you free.” You should never be a prisoner of the truth, only a keeper and preserver of it. The attempt to answer questions about human acts of the past can only benefit society. History is determined by the formulation of evidence. Evidence is a collective search for the surfacing of historical data and documentation of that data. This is the process of how we add actions of recorded events.

The value of history then is that it teaches us what man has done and what man is. The genocide of these people should be admitted as a part of the culture it happened in. We then can learn from our past mistakes in the attempt to improve our world of today.

RABBI MARC RUBENSTEIN

Temple Isaiah

Newport Beach

It is clear that the events happened. The international community recognizes it happened. But it is not the first time. Not only did the Turks chase out the Armenians, but they chased out the Greeks as well (Turkey was Greek before the Ottomans invaded).

One of the greatest churches in history now stands as a museum because the Greek community was chased out. But do we stop there? What about Nazareth and Bethlehem? The historic Christian communities in these cities have dwindled to nearly nothing because of the Muslim occupations.

The cities where Jesus was born and grew up no longer are Christian cities. Nations like Jordan and the countries of North Africa were historically Christian countries. Since the militant forces of Islam conquered the region, it has become predominantly Islamic. The last country to remain largely Christian is Lebanon, and we have seen Hamas bully the Christians there since the end of the Hamas war with Israel.

Is it necessary for us to get a formal federal resolution passed condemning each of these things to right past injustices?

It may help for a short time Armenians affected by the genocide, but at the same time it would help, it would fuel the ethnic tensions with the Kurds in Iraq and explode into chaos beyond the terrible things we are already seeing happen in Iraq.

Is another war really the answer to solve the injustice of the past? I don’t think so. Like our own history with slavery and Japan’s history during World War II, descendants of the atrocities live allowing themselves to continue to be victimized by the past by demanding an apology, and unless they get it, they fester and ache.

Jesus told us that we need to forgive one another “70 times seven” — or infinitely. It does not mean we forget and remain open to becoming victims again; it does mean we don’t allow the past to continue to victimize us.

The only power the past has over us is the power we give it. To refuse to forgive is like refusing to have a cancerous tumor removed. The cancer will grow and take over your body.

The Amish response to the school shootings last year of so many of their children was overwhelming. Before the blood dried on the schoolhouse floor, they sent word to the shooter’s family that they had forgiven him. They suffer, like anyone else, but remember the words of Jesus on the cross as he was about to die: “Father, forgive them. They don’t understand what they are doing.”

I think it is short-sighted of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to force a bill that will certainly add to our national insecurity and proof that agendas are more important than dealing with real issues.

But in a culture where people feel they have the right to be angry and get revenge, it seems inevitable.

RIC OLSEN

Lead Pastor

The Beacon

Anaheim