Victims Twice

Why push the Armenian genocide theme at this point in time? The undeniable extermination of hundreds of thousands of Armenians took place nearly a century ago. (Well, that is, undeniable by any of us that don't actually have ancestors that carried around the red-smeared bayonets and pitchforks for some Armenian kill sport.) Why push it now?

The answer lies quite simply in the political tennis court of MoveOn.org and liberal Democrats willing to take whatever steps necessary to make it difficult to fight the war in Iraq. From Ralph Peters in Front Page Mag:

Last Wednesday, the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution formally declaring the Armenian tragedy what it was: genocide. Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to bring the resolution to a vote on the floor, after which it would go to the Senate.

We need to stop it. It's a travesty and a betrayal. Of Armenian-Americans. And of our troops.

Make no mistake: I'm on the Armenian side in the court of history. When the same resolution came up in years past, I supported it. The Armenian survivors - their descendents, at this point - deserve justice.

And I have no sympathy with the Turks. The Turks are jerks. After the United States supported them unswervingly for more than a half-century, they stiffed us the single time we needed help - when we asked to move an Army division through Turkey on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[...]

Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.

That's what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn't about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It's a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals.

The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won't be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.

The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we'd be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.

It's a brilliant ploy - the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they're responding to their Armenian-American constituents - while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.

The Armenian resolution loses some of its luster when close inspection reveals its ultimate goal is not the remembrance of the genocide but rather to force regional redeployment by US military forces. The resolution, in all honesty, is nothing but a byproduct of a greater effort by Democrats to leave the Middle East in the hands of the Islamists. Incidentally, that same fanatical ideology that gladly accepted the task of wiping the Armenians off the face of Earth in the first place.