Wrong time for a resolution on century-old genocide

October 19, 2007 at 2:00a.m.

In a perfect world, there would be no genocide. In a less perfect world, at least people would be able to recognize genocide for what it was.

Alas, we live in a far-from-perfect world. And because we do, it would be foolhardy, perhaps even reckless, for the United States Congress to pass a resolution that would label as genocide the killing of Armenians nearly a century ago by Ottoman Turks.

It appears that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is coming to see that support for the resolution is evaporating. “Whether it will come up or not, or what the action will be, remains to be seen,” Pelosi told reporters.

This is not a particularly proud moment for Congress. Certainly members of Congress should be able to debate the merits of this resolution, or any other, and vote their conscience on it — in a nearly perfect world.

Safety issue

But Congress, sitting safely in Washington, far from the battlefield, does not have the luxury of taking the moral high ground on this issue if its doing so makes it more difficult for American troops to do the job they’ve been given in Iraq.

Turkey quite literally holds the key to resupplying and protecting our troops in Iraq. About 70 percent of U.S. military cargo flowing into Iraq goes through Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Turkey has made it clear that those shipments will be blocked if the resolution were to pass.

The resolution states that “the Armenian genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923.” An estimated 1.5 million Armenians died, the resolution states, while 500,000 were expelled, resulting in “the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.”

Turkey claims that the death toll has been inflated and that those who died did so as a result of civil unrest, not genocide.

Political reality

The merits of these two points of view have been debated for decades and from time to time have driven congressional politics. The Associated Press reported that Democrat Adam B. Schiff, whose Southern California district contains one of the nation’s largest ethnic Armenian populations, won his seat in 2000 after then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., pulled an Armenia genocide bill from the House floor, dooming the re-election chances of Schiff’s Republican predecessor. Schiff is a co-author of this year’s resolution.

But there are worse things for a congressman to have to do than explain to a powerful constituency why he wasn’t able to deliver on a political promise. It’s more important in this case to deliver materiel to the troops than promises to the voters.

In letting this resolution die, Congress can take comfort in knowing that all eight living former secretaries of state and three former defense secretaries are on record as saying the resolution would endanger national security in the Middle East.

If Armenian lives were being lost today, it would be a different question. But this is an issue that has been debated for ages, and that debate can be picked up again on another day — when vital American interests are not so clearly at stake.