Alex Massie is right on the mark again:

But of course Lemkin himself deliberately cited the suffering of the Armenians when he first wrote about genocide. He didn’t seem to share Mr Cohen’s belief that there is only one kind of genocide.

I appreciate Mr. Massie picking up on this point.  After all, if someone confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust had been looking for precedents of coordinated state extermination of its own population the Armenian genocide would have been an obvious example in the 1940s.   

What strikes me as so strange about all this is that virtually no one in the Washington political or media establishment has ever applied this same level of skepticism to talk about genocide in Darfur, to say nothing of the much more dubious case of Kosovo.  I expect that I will look in vain for Cohen’s citations of Lemkin from the spring of 1999.  All that needed to be said in 1999 was the word “Balkan” and suddenly everyone who was anyone was convinced that genocide was about to happen again (not that any of the people who wanted to “crush Serb skulls” ever gave a second thought to the genocide of Serbs during WWII at the hands of the forerunners of our good friends and allies in Zagreb). 

Pundits and pols are very free with the word when the regime being accused is one that they don’t much like, which is why I have tended to be very skeptical about people who describe something as genocide in the present.  It has frequently become a one-sided and tendentious political weapon that seems to be deployed for other reasons.  Yet in this case, when the evidence is clear, the government responsible is long gone and all that is being asked of anyone is to recognise the obvious, everyone becomes terribly anxious and reticent.     

Massie also notes a ridiculous Hiatt op-ed:

Then there’s Fred Hiatt, the WaPo’s editorial page editor  who thinks the resolution should be spiked because, well, modern Armenia isn’t properly democratic. Or something like that.

I had seen Hiatt’s op-ed, and my first response was simply to move on to something else.  Then it occurred to me that Hiatt’s column quite unintentionally helps explain why the resolution is necessary.  Hiatt’s argument, such as it is, is that the Armenian Diaspora could have used their time and resources for much better purposes than lobbying for this resolution.  Think of what all that money and attention could for Armenia, Hiatt exulted!  Armenia is a poor and corrupt state with a dysfunctional government, and the Diaspora could work to change that. 

Not that Fred Hiatt has ever, to my knowledge, given a fig for what happened to the Republic of Armenia, mind you, but his tiresome lecture did make me think of something important.  It was, as some of us will remember, Hrant Dink’s argument that the Diasporans should stop fixating on the genocide and work to build a better Armenia.  Dink, a great man, argued that the preoccupation with the genocide would become “poison in the blood” for the people who continued to focus on it so intently.  Dink was actually arguing for the Armenians to move on and try to build a better future for the independent Armenian state that Armenians finally did have–the very thing that Hiatt has suddenly discovered as the right answer–and for his wise counsel he was indicted by the Turkish government for “insulting Turkishness.”  How could that be?  Well, his remarks about “poison in the blood” were taken entirely out of context and turned into an attack on Turks.  When he was talking about poison, according to the government, he was referring to Turks.  This was a malicious and obvious lie, as the government there must have known, but the hysteria in the press that the charges generated led in short order to Dink’s assassination by a Turkish nationalist. 

Dink was right–the genocide should not be an all-consuming passion, and Armenians should work to improve Armenia.  For his efforts to de-emphasise the focus on the genocide (while also insisting on the reality of the genocide), he was prosecuted and then murdered.  His son has since been indicted under the same charge and sentenced to a year in prison.  That is the government for whom the apologists are carrying water. 

Yet here is another reason why recognition of the genocide is important–without widespread recognition and pressure on Ankara to acknowledge the reality of the genocide, the Diasporans will never be able to let go and start the necessary work of building up Armenia.  Not, of course, that Turkey has had any interest in aiding the improvement or reform of Armenia, since they have kept the border sealed in solidarity with the Azeris.  The poverty, corruption and bad government of the Republic have more than a little to do with that situation, which Washington tacitly endorses with its alliances with Turkey and Azerbaijan.  Hiatt has quite unwittingly helped the argument for the resolution, by making clear that Armenia’s development depends in part on the Diasporans’ being able to turn their attention to other things besides this.

Richard Cohen started out all right, but then goes into the ditch:

Of even that, I have some doubt. The congressional resolution repeatedly employs the word “genocide,” a term used by many scholars. But Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish emigre who coined the term in 1943, clearly had in mind what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. If that is the standard — and it need not be — then what happened in the collapsing Ottoman Empire was something short of genocide. It was plenty bad — maybe as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished, many of them outright murdered — but not all Armenians everywhere in what was then Turkey were as calamitously affected. The substantial Armenian communities in Constantinople, Smyrna and Aleppo were largely spared.

Not every Tutsi in Rwanda was “affected,” either, but we don’t quibble about that.  Of course, the Armenian elite in Constantinople was not spared, and tens of thousands of members of the Armenian community in Smyrna was massacred when Kemal’s forces took the city in 1922.  Frankly, this line of argument is a bit like saying, “Well, since there were some Jews left at the end of the war, it wasn’t that bad.”

Cohen is trying hard to reach moral equivalency:

Among them were the Armenians, an ancient people who had been among the first to adopt Christianity. By the end of the 19th century, they were engaged in guerrilla activity.

How nice it must be to sit back and talk about what “they,” the Armenians, all did.  Some Armenians were involved in guerrilla activity, but virtually the entire Armenian population of eastern Anatolia was “punished.”  The actions of a relative few neither explain nor justify the murderous response of the CUP.

Cohen says:

Within Turkey, Armenians were feared as a fifth column.

Set aside the obnoxious dismissal of the Armenians’ reputation as the “loyal millet.”  Unlike many members of the Rum millet, the Armenians typically did not engage in separatist or subversive activities.  Of all the Christian subjects of the Ottomans, the Armenians had given the least cause for offense, yet they were the ones who suffered the full wrath of the empire to whom the overwhelming majority remained loyal.  Sound familiar?  Need I point out the obvious problem with talking about the nationalist delusions about minorities as if they were mitigating or justifying?  Nationalists and genocidaires routinely treat their victims as collaborators with an enemy, whether real or imagined.  Collaboration is often not happening in any form, but it is assumed by the ideologues for whom “those people” are all inherently treacherous and disloyal.  Sound familiar?

Cohen:

So contemporary Turkey is entitled to insist that things are not so simple. If you use the word genocide, it suggests the Holocaust — and that is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, the past is so very complicated!  Especially when the people who were butchered don’t have anything to do with you.  It’s much easier to talk about context and ambiguity when the humanity of the victims doesn’t really matter as much to you.  If you use the word genocide, it also suggests Rwanda, Cambodia, the Ukraine in the ’30s.  None of these is directly identifiable with the methods employed in the Holocaust, but each is a genocide.  It need not be done in organised camps with gas to count as the same crime.

Cohen then goes deeper into apologist mode:

Its modern leaders, beginning with the truly remarkable Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, have done a Herculean job of bringing the country from medievalism to modernity without, it should be noted, the usual bloodbath.

Except for the bloodbaths that made a more homogenous Turkish state possible, and except for the ongoing repression of the Kurds.  By all means, give Kemal his due for modernising Turkey, but let’s not pretend that it was all done through some pleasant and humane process.  It was brutal, coercive and, more often than his admirers like to recall, quite violent.

Cohen finally comes around, after all of this, to declare Turkey’s threats over the resolution and its efforts to suppress the truth to be unacceptable, but he took such an appalling route to get there I’m not sure that it matters.

A Sullivan reader writes about “Gen-X Conservatives”:

I’m a young, newly-minted assistant professor here at a large state school in Mississippi and I’ve got to say I’ve had just had an interesting conversation with one of my more conservative students. As far as I can tell he’s a pretty ‘die hard’ Republican. He’s really big into state and local politics and is even participating in a big way in a statewide campaign – and not for the first time. He is bright, sophisticated, and probably a future power in state and local politics here in Mississippi.

What surprised me was both his anti-war attitude and, moreover, his positive view of Obama versus Hillary. Though I did not ask, as it was not my place, who he intended to vote for, it seemed clear to me that he recognizes that 2008 is going to be a disaster for the GOP outside of the deep south and that Obama was probably the best the Democrats had to offer in terms of leadership potential. What most impressed him, he said, was that Obama was against the war from the beginning – giving credence to the effectiveness of the ‘Obama has superior judgement’ meme that is being put out by Obama’s campaign.

The meme may be effective, but, like many memes, its ability to reproduce itself has nothing to do with its actual merit.  In memetics, as it’s called, the race is not to the good or the wise, but simply to the trendy and the catchy.  I heard Dennett lecture to this effect at a philosophy conference once.  The meme that Obama has superior judgement is catchy because the country is desperate to have somebody, anybody with good judgement in a position of power.  It has been so long since we’ve had such a thing that most of us have literally forgotten what it looks like, which is why it seems remotely plausible that Obama might just possess such good judgement.  The meme, however, does not contain that little something I like to call “truth.” 

As has been shown in his fantastical foreign policy speeches, his blunders on Pakistan policy, his appalling position on the war in Lebanon and his support for anti-Iranian policies, Obama’s judgement is hardly superior, if by superior we mean “likely to reach sensible and intelligent conclusions.”  It is certainly far from unconventional.  Antiwar conservatives, especially younger antiwar conservatives, should not be fooled by Obama’s rhetoric of “change” and his use of his Iraq war opposition.   

He opposed the Iraq war in a district and a state where it was exceedingly easy to oppose it.  No one will confuse Hyde Park and South Side Chicago with the jingo capital of the world, to put it mildly.  (Ours is a neighbourhood where you can readily find the fairly amusing bumper sticker, “I’d rather be smashing imperialism.”)  He happened to be right about Iraq, but there is little or no evidence that he has applied the same sober judgement to other foreign policy matters, and there is really not much evidence that he would retain his previously good judgement under intense political pressure.  There is no evidence because, until this campaign, he has never really been under intense political pressure.   

Goodness knows that I, too, look forward to a day when the clapped-out, wasteful politics of the Boomers disappears from the scene.  I believe that 2008 probably represents the last hurrah of that generation’s own preoccupations and their continual refighting of the same dreary fights, at least as far as foreign policy and cultural debates are concerned.  (Obviously, the inter-generational political fight that is brewing over entitlements and pensions is just getting started.)  I was born in 1979, so I believe this entitles me (not that I want the dubious honour) to some claim to belong to Generation X or the “13th Generation” as it has sometimes been called.  For my part I do not see the leadership potential in Obama that everyone keeps raving about.  Clinton and Obama are both quite dangerous and have terrible policy ideas, and it is not at all clear to me that Obama is necessarily the better of the two.  People of “my” generation should not buy into the Obama hype simply because they are tired of Boomers screwing things up.

Jeffrey Goldberg, as some may recall, was the enterprising New Yorker writer who wrote up Kurdish propaganda a report on Ansar al-Islam and its alleged ties to Iraqi intelligence.  These claims were naturally entirely bogus, and this ought to have been obvious at the time.   

As noted by A Tiny Revolution, Goldberg also made some amazingly foolish statements five years ago this month, such as:

The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality [bold added].

At least he didn’t say six months!  That last line is remarkable, but this was my favourite one:

Their [i.e., opponents of the war] lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected. 

Those silly, inexperienced cretins!  They’ve certainly learned their lesson.

Wolcott has additional comments.

Alex Massie gets it:

Ultimately it’s pretty simple: you either treat genocide as genocide or you don’t. But if you don’t at least have the decency to stay quiet about it rather than offering weasel excuses about the national interest and all the rest of it.

Besides it is humiliating to give in to Turkish bullying. To wit:

A top Turkish official warned Thursday that consequences “won’t be pleasant” if the full House approves the resolution.

“Yesterday some in Congress wanted to play hardball,” said Egemen Bagis, foreign policy adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “I can assure you Turkey knows how to play hardball.”

Screw them.

Spengler also has a number of good points, including this one:

The sorry spectacle of an American president begging Congress not to affirm what the whole civilized world knows to be true underlines the overall stupidity of US policy towards the Middle East. It is particularly despicable for a Western nation to avert its eyes from a Muslim genocide against a Christian population.

Thanks to commenter tcowan for the link to Spengler’s article.

Ron Paul’s campaign has started running radio ads, and intriguingly the first ad focuses on popular, “mainstream” themes.  The ad script says:

Anncr: Who is Ron Paul, the candidate for President? He served his country as a flight surgeon after the Cuban Missile crisis.

As a young doctor, Ron Paul worked nights in the emergency room of an inner city hospital, taking care of everyone, whether they could pay or not.

As an OB-GYN, he has delivered over 4000 babies. As a doctor, Ron Paul knows our health care system needs real change— where patients and doctors are in charge, not big corporations or government bureaucrats.

As a Congressman— for over twenty years, Ron Paul knows our Constitution is there to protect our freedom and limit government in our lives.

Ron Paul has refused his congressional pension. He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch. He has never voted for a tax increase or an unbalanced budget. People who know him call him the taxpayers’ best friend.

To learn more about this remarkable man, go to RonPaul2008.com. That’s Ron Paul 2008.com
RP: I’m Ron Paul and I approve this message.

The ad has some nice populist flourishes.  It manages to tie in Rep. Paul’s medical career with health care and allude to his pro-life stance without dwelling on it and it pitches a constitutionalist, libertarian message without talking about the war.  It seems pretty intelligently crafted to me.  This ad makes me think that Paul is now really trying to expand his base of support.  The days of the symbolic protest campaign definitely seem to be over.

But while I agree with his goal of working towards a rational, secular world, a triumph of enlightenment values, I disagree entirely with his proposed strategy, which seems to involve putting a bullet through every god-haunted brain. ~Pharyngula

It might be worth noting that the two are frequently paired in the last two centuries, and that the triumph of “enlightenment values” has often enough been associated with just such mass killing of believers.    Those who would like to insist that such mass killing-for-enlightenment has nothing to do with the “enlightenment values” cannot very well make the same connection between religion and violence committed in the name of religion.  It would require instead a non-ideological and intelligent appraisal of history, which secularists and atheists, at least of the militant variety, have never been interested in making.  Of course, a crucial difference, certainly in Western history, is that secular revolutionaries have no difficulty believing that the ends of advancing the cause justify the means, while for Christians in particular to make similar arguments they must betray Christianity’s moral and spiritual teachings.      

This gets to the heart of the absurdity of Hitchens’ view of religion.  If it “ruins everything,” as the subtitle of his book claims, how can a decent atheist stand by and let it go on ruining things so terribly?  Hitchens was simply showing the fanaticism that tends to accompany a view in which all believers are either dupes or power-hungry villains who have made the world a much worse place.  Once you have cast theism itself as a species of totalitarian groupthink, as Hitchens and his ilk do, it’s rather hard to say that you shouldn’t be willing to fight the totalitarians you have just so labeled, and to fight them tooth and nail.  Hitchens really is just taking his position to its logical extreme, which reveals the basic moral bankruptcy and evil at the heart of his ideas.  He has never been squeamish about endorsing revolutionary violence before, and his so-called “move to the right” over the last few years was simply his joining together with people who shared his faith in the redemptive and liberating power of violence.   

Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has joined the ranks of militant secularism and has lately advocated “defeating Islam” in much the same way as Hitchens, Hitchens possesses the intense certainty that a supposed devotion to rationality and enlightenment require large-scale irrational slaughter and barbarism.  That is nothing new.  It is the inevitable venom of the disenchanted ex-believer or the bitter non-believer, who cannot simply cease believing and leave it at that, but must try to “free” everyone else from “chains” that the latter do not see.  If they will not free themselves, they must be forced to be free–such is the bloody logic of “enlightenment values” and “freethinking” in action.  To get from the Freisinnigen to the death camps it takes only a few steps.

Weigel says:

I’m always curious about what Paul voters expect from this race and what they’ll do if he doesn’t win.

It depends on which Paul voters we’re talking about.  The young, optimistic and enthusiastic boosters for Rep. Paul may actually think he has a chance at winning, in which case I feel sorry for them.  It isn’t going to happen, and not necessarily because Paul’s message wouldn’t resonate with enough voters.  We have seen what happens when an insurgent anti-establishment Republican candidate has won in some of the early primaries, and it isn’t pleasant.  The mild irritation and contempt shown towards Paul and his supporters by the “mainstream” voices in the GOP would turn into incandescent hate and a concerted program of opposition if there was any chance of Paul acquiring a substantial number of delegates.  

It seems to me that other Paul voters are simply disaffected folks who are looking for someone whom they don’t loathe to support.    They expect precisely nothing, but are glad to have an alternative.  Then there are those, including myself, who have been familiar with Ron Paul for many years and who have been long-time Paul admirers.  We are in substantial agreement with virtually everything he says, and so will support him as a matter of upholding the principles he espouses.  We expect that Ron Paul will do these principles credit and speak on behalf of those libertarians and conservatives who have little or no representation these days.   

Speaking for myself, I really never expected anything, except that I thought Paul would present the libertarian-conservative case effectively and challenge others in the GOP to face up to the disasters they have helped create.  Now that there is a chance for a bit more impact on the outcome of the race, I am hopeful that Paul will become the rallying point for opponents of the eventual frontrunner.  That may not happen, but if there could be a large show of united opposition to the eventual frontrunner and nominee it would go a long way towards weakening the eventual nominee (who will, in all likelihood, be terrible on a number of major issues) without involving a futile and ultimately self-defeating third party bid.

Mitt Romney created a stir over the weekend with his assertion that he speaks for “the Republican wing of the Republican Party.” ~Dan Balz

The magnificent dancing fraud is at it again with more reinventions of himself.  In some ways, it imitates Dean’s own repositioning from reasonably competent centrist Northeastern governor to fire-breathing darling of the netroots, except that Romney is not receiving anything like the enthusiastic response from activists that Dean had.  What is more worrisome for Romney is that he is echoing a phrase that was given some currency earlier this year by the failed presidential candidate and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, which shows just how desperate Romney has become.  An insurgent candidate speaks of representing a wing of the party, because he has to show that he is a more pure and idealistic and less accommodating alternative to the “safe” or establishment choices.  Insurgent candidacies thrive on energy and the promise of issuing a stiff, sharp kick to the party leadership that has hitherto failed the core constituents.  Meanwhile, a confident leading candidate speaks of representing the entire party.  Romney has resorted to this kind of talk (which is all the less credible coming from him) because he feels the walls closing in around him.  He is treated by the media and pundits as a so-called first-tier candidate, and he has significant establishment support inside Washington, but he is gaining no traction nationally–hence the desperation gambit of claiming the high ground of true Republicanism.   

Gilmore’s phrasing was obviously meant to mimic Dean’s insurgent rhetoric from 2003-04 that he used to set him apart from those Democrats who had effectively been on the GOP’s side, especially when it came to the war.  Gilmore also pioneered the “Rudy McRomney” name and conjured in the minds of many conservatives a three-headed monster, so it is especially amusing that Romney has now adopted Gilmore’s claim to represent true Republicanism.  As has been said in a different, but related context, it’s good if the town whore repents, but no one expects the penitent to preach the sermon. 

Update: Dave Weigel has more.

Chris Orr has a Highlander-inspired response to the story.