Bush lobbies AGAINST calling the Turkey mass murder of Armenians as genocide., Somebody contact Mahmoud Ahmadinejad STAT! Options

[blaarg]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/10/us....ians/index.html

President Bush and key figures in his administration lobbied hard Wednesday against a House resolution that labels the killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as "genocide." "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. This resolution is not the right response to those historic mass killings," Bush said at the White House.

Wow. And we give Ahmadinejad so much shit for "denying the holocaust" and here Bush is doing something similar...

And before some people get all riled up, I know that saying that the holocaust never happened and recognizing the fact that mass killings occurred but not labeling them as genocide are two separate things, but still, it seems a bit hypocritical.

I still don't see how labeling something what it is as "not the right response." I guess the labeling a genocide is contingent on our relations with the perpetrators.

[pebkac]

This isn't really a very simple issue.

Our close relationship with Turkey is beginning to remind me of the Cold War. Turkey is FAR from being a just or free society. And they're just as guilty of genocide against the Kurds as Iraq is (which I would say is a more important genocide to remember than the Armenian, not to make that into an argument against the resolution). In fact, they're still to this day trying to kill off Kurds. Yet we still support them because they're a "moderate" muslim nation of strategic importance.

I don't have an answer to the issue, but I'm not sure that we can make the ends justify the means here...

I guess my point here is that I'm not sure whether or not it's even a good thing for us to try to keep our alliance with Turkey. Sure it's pragmatic, but is it a good thing for us to do?