Congressman Tom Tancredo (Republican presidential candidate) has withdrawn his name as a co-sponsor of an Armenian Genocide resolution. All political candidates should have to answer questions about their position on genocide and on terrorist organizations.

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Paul Sheldon Foote

 

http://360.yahoo.com/paulsheldonfoote

 

September 30, 2007

 

The Europeans send professors to jail for denying the Jewish Holocaust during World War II.  In America, Congressman Tom Tancredo, a Republican candidate for President, has removed his name as a co-sponsor of an Armenian Genocide (1915 – 1917) resolution.  When will someone in the presidential debates ask all Democratic and Republican candidates to answer a question about which major events could be classified as genocides and which could not be classified as genocides?  For example, were there genocides in the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and during the Iraq War?

“Tancredo withdraws support of Armenian bill”

Today’s Zaman, a major Turkish newspaper, has described “an alleged genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks” in a September 29, 2007 article, “Tancredo withdraws support of Armenian bill”.  Today’s Zaman cited an announcement by the Armenian-American Political Action Committee (ARMENPAC) that Tancredo had withdrawn his name as the co-sponsor of resolutions without explanation.   This article noted also:

(a) The U.S. State Department reiterated on September 27, 2007 that the Bush administration is opposed to the use of resolutions on this issue.

(b) Eight former U.S. Secretaries of State have sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to ‘prevent the resolution from reaching the House’:  James Baker, Warren Christopher, Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and George Shultz.

(c) On September 27, 2007, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his strong opposition to the resolutions.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=123454

“ARMENPAC DENOUNCES CONGRESSMAN TANCREDO FOR RESCINDING SUPPORT OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION”

ARMENPAC accused Tancredo of caving in to pressure from the Turkish lobby on the Armenian Genocide resolutions (Senate Resolution 106 and House Resolution 106):

"I have no doubt in my mind that Congressman and Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo caved in to the lobby of a foreign government. That is the only logical explanation for the sudden and unexplained withdrawal of support for the Armenian Genocide recognition legislation. Recognition of a genocide that took the lives of 1.5 million people isn't one of those issues that legislators tend to flip-on. Either you understand that it happened and you recognize the value of having it reflected in our foreign policy to ensure that it never happens again – or you don’t.," said ARMENPAC Rocky Mountain Regional Director Pamela Barsam-Brown.

"Those of us in the Armenian community who work with legislators on this issue know how they are constantly pressured by the Turkish lobby to withdraw their support, and we commend those who have remained steadfast in their support in the face of denial. Obviously Congressman Tancredo, who has Presidential aspirations, felt that he could no longer lend his support to an issue he once believed in after the representatives from a foreign government came calling. I can only assume that this type of purposeful indecisiveness is what we can expect if Mr. Tancredo is ever elected President," concluded ARMENPAC Executive Director Jason Capizzi.

http://www.armenpac.org/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?id=EEApAukyFVsQXDKQTs

ARMENPAC failed to research Tancredo before accepting Tancredo as a co-sponsor of the resolution.  Time will tell whether Turkish political leaders would blunder by allying themselves with Tancredo.  Tancredo avoided military service in Vietnam using a mental excuse.  Tancredo is a strong supporter of the Iranian Communist MEK (MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran) terrorists.  The State Department has had the MEK on the list of terrorist organizations since the administration of former President Bill Clinton.  The MEK has committed atrocities in Iran and in Iraq.  Tancredo cannot claim to be ignorant about the issue of genocide.  Even the New York Times reported in 2003 that many Iranians regard Massoud Rajavi as the Pol Pot of Iran.

“Erdogan enlists U.S. Jews’ support for opposing the Armenian Genocide Resolution”

28.09.2007

PanARMENIAN.Net has reported that Turkey’s prime minister met in New York on Wednesday with representatives of the American Jewish community to discuss this issue:  Conference of Presidents, the Appeal of Conscience, the Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, and Bnai Brith International.   Erdogan described genocide recognition claims as baseless, suggested the creation of a joint commission of Turkey and of Armenia to study historical facts, and requested the Jewish community to support Turkey’s position.  Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that the ADL regards the events of 1915 ‘as being tantamount to genocide’ but that members of Congress are not historians and should not be voting on such resolutions.

"The Prime Minister also recalled Turkey’s call to Armenia to establish a joint commission to study historical facts, and stated that Turkey expected the Jewish community to confirm its support," a statement issued after the meeting said. Following the meeting, Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said that “at times there could be disagreement between friends, referring to the League’s had accepted the events of 1915 ‘as being tantamount to genocide’.  A quotation from Foxman included:

‘I believe that we should focus on the future, not the past. If the Jewish community, the United States and the Congress are willing to assist they should bring together Turkey and Armenia for the grandchildren of the two parties’

http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=23507

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS (IAGS)

 On June 13, 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) communicated to Turkey’s prime minister the group’s position on the Armenian Genocide:

      “We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention.  We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of decades.”

Approved Unanimously at the Sixth biennial meeting of

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS (IAGS)

June 7, 2005, Boca Raton, Florida

Contacts: Israel Charny, IAGS President; Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide, 972-2-672-0424; encygeno@mail.com

Gregory H. Stanton, IAGS Vice President; President, Genocide Watch, James Farmer Visiting Professor of Human Rights, University of Mary Washington; 703-448-0222; genocidewatch@aol.com

http://www.genocidewatch.org/TurkishPMIAGSOpenLetterreArmenia6-13-05.htm

Gendercide.org

Gendercide.org has published a case study of the Armenian Genocide, including photographs of some of the victims.  Gendercide.org concluded:

Turkey's defeat in World War I, and the consequent collapse of the Ottoman Empire, offered surviving Armenians an opportunity for national self-realization. In 1918, an independent Republic of Armenia was declared. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was granted the right to draw up the boundaries of a new Armenian nation, formalized at the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. However, the Turkish government, under nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk, rapidly renounced the Treaty. In collusion with the newly-created Soviet Union, the Turks invaded Armenia and reconquered six of the former western Ottoman provinces granted to Armenia under the Treaty, along with the Armenian provinces of Kars and Ardahan. What remained of Armenia was swallowed up by the invading Soviet armies. After a brief period of cooperation with Armenian nationalist forces, the Soviets took complete control in 1921, and Armenia was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (SFSR) in 1922. A separate Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was created in 1936. The Armenian Communist Party was the only political party permitted to function under Soviet rule, which remained in place until 1991, when Armenians overwhelmingly voted for secession from the collapsing USSR. In the late 1980s, the boundary established between Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan became the subject of bitter conflict, as Armenians fought to unite the predominantly Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with the new Armenian republic. A ceasefire was signed in 1994, but the enclave remains one of the "hot spots" of the volatile Caucasus region.

For many decades, the horrors inflicted upon the Armenian people were little-known in the outside world. Indeed, the Nazis' genocide against the Jews, the Poles, and others may have been facilitated by the "memory hole" into which the Armenians had fallen. "Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" mused Adolf Hitler in 1939, as he ordered a merciless assault on the civilian population of occupied Poland.

In recent decades, fortunately, the lie has been put to Hitler's rhetorical question. Armenian scholars and activists, joined by numerous sympathizers around the world, have worked to research and publicize the genocide, and to gather the testimony of survivors before they pass from the earth. Gradually, much of the outside world has acknowledged the scale and character of the slaughter. The Europan Parliament in 1987 voted in favour of recognizing the Armenian Genocide, as did the Russian parliament in 1994. Also in 1994, Israel, after decades of state-sponsored suppression of the facts of the genocide (which was felt to distract from the "exceptional" character of the Jewish holocaust), informally recognized that the fate of the Armenians "was not war," but "certainly massacre and genocide, something the world must remember," in the words of Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin.

The major exception to the rule, predictably, is Turkey. In the brief interim (1918-20) between the Ottoman collapse and the ascendancy of the nationalist Ataturk regime, the Turkish government did hold trials for dozens of accused war-criminals, but only fifteen death sentences were passed, and only three insignificant actors actually executed. (The three main organizers of the genocide were subsequently killed -- Enver Pasha while leading an anti-Bolshevik revolt in Turkestan in 1922, and Cemal Pasha and Talat Pasha by Armenian assassination squads, who tracked them down to deliver summary justice.) The Ataturk government effectively cancelled the court-martial process (Ataturk himself claiming that the Armenians killed were "victims of foreign intrigues" and guilty of abusing "the privileges granted them"). (For more on the trials, see Vahakn Dadrian, "The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11: 1 [Spring 1997].)

Since the early 1920s, successive Turkish governments have maintained an ostentatious silence on the subject, broken only to issue denials that the genocide ever occurred, and denunciations of those who assert that it did. In 1990, for example, the Turkish ambassador to the U.S. dismissed the holocaust as resulting from "a tragic civil war initiated by Armenian nationalists." The Turkish government has also devoted millions of dollars to a propaganda campaign aimed at western universities and a handful of compliant scholars. (See Amy Magaro Rubin, "Critics Accuse Turkish Government of Manipulating Scholarship", Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 October 1995.) They have had support from NATO and other western countries, which view Turkey as a linchpin of "stability" in the Near East. In the United States, for example, "conforming to Turkey's wishes, all congressional resolutions to recognize the Armenian Genocide have been opposed by the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, and all such resolutions have thus far been defeated." (Levon Chorbajian, "Introduction," in Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, eds., Studies in Comparative Genocide, p. xxvi.)

As Stanley Cohen of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem puts it:

The nearest successful example [of "collective denial"] in the modern era is the 80 years of official denial by successive Turkish governments of the 1915-17 genocide against the Armenians in which some 1.5 million people lost their lives. This denial has been sustained by deliberate propaganda, lying and coverups, forging documents, suppression of archives, and bribing scholars. The West, especially the United States, has colluded by not referring to the massacres in the United Nations, ignoring memorial ceremonies, and surrendering to Turkish pressure in NATO and other strategic arenas of cooperation.

http://www.gendercide.org/case_armenia.html

Genocide Watch

Genocide Watch has posted Gregory H. Stanton’s descriptions of “The 8 Stages of Genocide”, presented in 1996 to the U.S. State Department:

1.   CLASSIFICATION

2.   SYMBOLIZATION

3.   DEHUMANIZATION

4.   ORGANIZATION

5.   POLARIZATION

6.   PREPARATION

7.   EXTERMINATION

8.   DENIAL

http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm

Tancredo and all Political Candidates Must Explain Genocide Positions

Tancredo and hundreds of members of Congress (Democrats and Republicans) have signed statements of support for the Pol Pot of Iran terrorists.  More important than whether votes on Armenian Genocide resolutions have any value is the issue of preventing these members of Congress from promoting future genocides in Iran and elsewhere.  America’s presidential debates and news coverage in the major American media have been useless and misleading.  American voters should demand that each member of Congress and each presidential candidate answer this question:  “Have you ever signed a statement of support for or accepted a political campaign contribution from the Iranian Communist MEK (MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran) terrorists?”  Their answers to this question will be more revealing about their support for future genocides than any vote on an Armenian Genocide resolution.

Authors Bio:

Professor, California State University, Fullerton

After marriage to an Iranian lady in Tehran, Iran in 1968, I returned to Tehran in the summer of 1970 to work at the American Embassy. After earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, I remained at Harvard University for another year to study the Persian (Farsi) language. In the early 1970's, Singer Sewing Machine Company sent me on assignments in the Middle East and North Africa, including assignments in Tehran, Iran.

From 1994 to 1996, I was a professor at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman. This gave me an opportunity to present papers at academic conferences in the United Arab Emirates and in Turkey. Also, I was able to speak to audiences in Iran and to teach English in Iran during vacations to the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1995 and 1996.

My wife makes frequent trips to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In our home in California, we have an international satellite dish providing access to television stations from a large number of countries in the world, including approximately 40 Persian (Farsi) language stations.