Can't We All Get Along?

[Jamo]

Originally Posted by BeanCounter

Jamo,

What's your take on the Armenian resolution? I'm familiar with the history of what went on but what is trying to be achieved by it? Recompense? Rub the Turks nose in it? Admission of Guilt? What's the driving force behind it? It seems like it comes at a critical time and as far as I know no one doubts the validity of the claim. History itself tells us that.

Just some more mindless third world crap to thicken an already overdone soup of regional politics.

Lots of stuff at play. Turkey wants to be part of modern Europe in its future, but is unwilling to come to grips with its past. It's always a "critical time" isn't it? The issue was ignored when we needed an eye on Russia, and now they make it sound like they are needed to keep the region calm...yet they wouldn't permit us to use their airspace to invade Sadaam's hell. They prosecute folks (and allow them to be killed) when they talk about such issues under the mandate that it's "harmful to Turkishness" but talk about how they are an open and free society. They want to attack the phuked up Kurds, the same folks that they hired to do the dirty work on the Armenians.

Armenians are pissed about being forgotten while everyone keeps lamenting the Jews. The world turned its back while it went on. They worry about Armenia being able to survive surrounded by muslim nations. Life under the yolk of the USSR wasn't all that bad...life today in Armenia is benficially described as "historical" (ie., downright medieval). Nobody believes in making geographical or financial claims, but some believe an admission would protect family members who live in Turkey.

Turkey does a huge amount of business with France, the only European nation to officially condemn it for carrying out the genocide, so the strength of Turkey's threats to the U.S. have to be measured somewhat.

Would it be a good thing for Turkey to acknowlege the low points of the Ottoman Empire? I think so...not so much for Armenians, but for Turkey itself so it can move to main table. Did it help Germany to acknowlege what Hitler did, Russia for Stalin, China for Mao, the U.S. for slavery and the treatment of Japanese (while Germans and Italians got a pass), Japan for what it did to the Chinese, Koreans and Philipinos...would South Africa have changed?

Would we have a Darfur or Burma if we maintained some phuking standards around this little blue ball?

For Armenians, it's not so much that Turkey acknowlege what happened...more that Europe and the U.S. acknowlege that they allowed it to happen in that sick phuk dying Ottoman Empire. Europe and the U.S. want to feel good by blaming Turkey...make the former "Sick Man of Europe" the "Straw Man of Europe" so to speak.

Just my take...personally, I'd like to bomb the phuk out of the whole freeking region.