LET'S TALK TURKEY

Recently your House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (toothless but irksome) to classify the massacres of Armenians in 1915 Turkey (which occurred under cover of WWI during the Ottomon Empire) as genocide. The Turkish have always been skittish over this dark period of its history and predictably are outraged by this resolution which has been bantered about by congress for nearly the last hundred years. So the question has to be asked: Why Now??

Considering the gamesmanship of our politicians, in my opinion, it's a back-handed swipe at the administration. Despite the overwhelming objection of the Turkish people, Bush was successful in getting air rights to fly from and/or over Turkey (which borders Iraq, Iran and Syria) get the strategic picture? Turkey refused to send troops into Iraq to participate in the coalition of the willing but has its own beef with the kurds in northern Iraq. So far it has been restraining itself against the kurds who seemingly have been emboldened by the American occupation and taking swipes at the Turks. If you remember K&A went to Turkey maybe two years ago. Shortly thereafter there were a series of random bombings about which I have never heard anything further. Also last week, several Turkish civilians were pulled from a bus (killed?) allegedly by marauding kurds. Turkey's dilemma has been that it's been trying desperately to be accepted into the European Union and therefore on its best behavior. All of that may be going out the window with the introduction of this resolution. Bush needs Turkey and has been trying to smooth over the slap in the face to Turkey and to let the American people know that antagonizing Turkey equates to not supporting our troops.

I mention all this because aside from the many current issues our politicians could be spending their time on, they dredge up what to most Americans is an obscure issue that does not involve America. Would it not be more understandable if they stood on principle by officially acknowledging the decimation of Native Americans and the occupation of their lands for the last four hundred or so years, as well as the slave trade? There is a new book which calculates the number of Africans caught up in the slave trade, based on the manifests of slaveship captains, at twelve million twice the number in the holacaust of WWII. The documented number of Armenians slaughtered was 1.5 million.

The Slave Ship: A Human History (Hardcover)by Marcus Rediker (Author)
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I realize you folks don't have time to involve yourselves in such issues, but it can't hurt for you to have some knowledge of current events.