THE STARVING ARMENIANS

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)April 7, 2010 WednesdayThey were the first victims of one genocide among so many in the 20thCentury, but it's not diplomatic to say so. The Turkish governmentmight be offended. So the Obama administration pulled out the usualstops the other day, urging the House Foreign Affairs Committee toshelve a resolution taking note of the Armenian massacres during theFirst World War.Yes, Barack Obama had promised to recognize the Armenian genocide whenhe was running for president, but he's president now. He's in power,and with great power come great responsibilities, prominent amongthem not speaking truth. Truth can be impolitic.The secretary of state dutifully echoed her boss. "Both PresidentObama and I have made clear, both last year and again this year," saidHillary Clinton, "that we do not believe any action by the Congressis appropriate, and we oppose it." What's fealty to history comparedto the demands of Realpolitik?In the end, the House committee did decide to call genocide genocide.By one vote. The final tally was Truth 23, Silence in the Face ofEvil, 22.The vote may say less about what happened in Turkey a century ago thanabout what has happened to the American spirit since. For there wasa time when America did not hesitate to cry bloody murder. ("500,000Armenians said to have perished/ Washington asked to stop slaughter ofChristians by Turks and Kurds."-New York Times, September 24, 1915.)It was a time when the mass deportation and annihilation of a wholepeople could still shock the world, and move even diplomats toprotest. Our secretary of state at the time not only had convictionsbut dared expressed them. William Jennings Bryan protested themassacres "as a matter of humanity." How undiplomatic.The American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, did what he couldto publicize the genocide even before there was such a word for acrime so immense. He was determined that the whole world would knowwhat was happening in Turkey. To quote one of his public appeals:"More than 2 million persons were deported. The system was aboutthe same everywhere. The Armenians, men, women, and children, wouldbe assembled in the marketplace. Then the able-bodied men would bemarched off and killed by being shot or clubbed in cold blood at somespot which did not necessitate the trouble of burial. . . . As a laststep, those who remained, mothers, grandmothers, children were drivenforth on their death pilgrimages across the desert of Aleppo, withno food, no water, no shelter, to be robbed and beaten at every halt."Ambassador Morgenthau's conclusion: "If America is going to condonethese offenses . . . she is party to the crime." Teddy Roosevelt,who was always ready for a fight, was long out of the White House bythen, but when the massacres came to light, he demanded a declarationof war against Turkey.The whole country rang with protests. The massacres even entered theAmerican vernacular. When children wouldn't eat their vegetables,they might be told to remember "the starving Armenians." Old-timersmay remember the phrase; it remains in the language even if thehistory behind it has been forgotten.Now, if the pundits and analysts note this congressional resolutionat all, they seem more interested in the politics of it than thehistorical truth it expresses. Which is how politics loses its moraledge and becomes only a power game.The Turks responded to the passage of the resolution in committeeby recalling their ambassador for "consultations"-a show of Ankara'sdispleasure.For official purposes, the Turkish government still claims theArmenians weren't victims of any organized massacre in the years1915-1918. It seems they just disappeared one day by the hundredsof thousands. Or they met with a series of unfortunate accidents inwartime. Or for their own reasons they chose to decamp for the desertsof Syria. Or they were wiped out in a series of spontaneous riotsthat the beleaguered authorities could do nothing to prevent. Or,to use a phrase from another genocide, they were resettled in the East.In short, when a single truth must be avoided, falsehoods multiply.And diplomats impose a discreet silence. Why offend?Over time the Armenian massacres faded from the world's memory, butsome statesmen remembered, and drew the inevitable conclusion: that theworld would scarcely notice a little genocide among friends. To quoteone of them speaking to a group of his confidants: "It's a matter ofindifference to me what a weak Western European civilization will sayabout me. I have issued the command-and I'll have anybody who uttersbut one word of criticism executed by a firing squad-that our waraim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physicaldestruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-headformations in readiness-for the present only in the East-with ordersto them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion men,women, and children. . . . Only thus shall we gain the living spacewe need. Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of theArmenians?" -A. Hitler------ :: ------Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editorof the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.