Nancy Pelosi Doesn't Know Any Combat Grunts!

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is hell bent on making the murky waters of both Iraq and Turkey all the more muddy. She and her comrade Sten Hoyer are bound and determined to see the resolution condemning Turkey for "genocide" committed during World War I against the Armenians regardless of the consequences to US interests or US troops in 2007.

The Geek has already registered his opposition to this piece of feel-good tripe on several grounds. First, it is historically inaccurate as it fails to account for the context both political and military surrounding the forced expulsion of Armenians from eastern Anatolia including the deaths of thousands. Second, the proposed House Resolution fails to note that Turkey is a successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which was the polity that undertook the expulsion and persecution. Third, and most important, the action exacerbates the situation in which Turkey finds itself today with respect to the Kurdish guerrilla group, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging defensive insurgency in southern Turkey for over twenty years at a great cost in Turkish lives.

She and others in the House have blown off the legitimate concerns expressed by SecDef Gates regarding continued access to air bases and roads important to the conduct of US combat operations in Iraq. Her determination to press ahead is so great that she and her ilk are willing to put American lives at increased risk.

Voice of America http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-10-14-voa20.cfm, quotes her as saying, "I tell you this. Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture, all of those issues about who we are as a country. And I think that our troops are well served when we declare who we are as a country and increase the respect that people have for us as a nation."

Fine sentiment, the Geek is sure.

But, he has to ask, so what?

Combat grunts are remarkably unconcerned with sentiment when someone is shooting at them or trying to rip their brains out with a roadside bomb. What they care about is a lot more basic. Am I getting the support I need to do my job--and come home in one piece, not several, packed in a fiberglass box?

The death of Armenians nearly a century ago in the midst of a collapsing empire facing invasion on no less than four fronts is massively irrelevant to our troops in Iraq today. So, Speaker Pelosi, don't try to hide behind the shield of doing something which "well serves our troops."

Also, Madam Speaker, don't try to pretend that this resolution will somehow assure the world concerning our values and goals. The current administration has cast sufficient doubt upon those with its invasion of Iraq.

Our values will be far more effectively announced to the world by our cleaning up the mess in Iraq than by all the phony baloney resolutions that congress might crank out. Our values are demonstrated by what we do--not by House Resolutions.

It doesn't matter if we are the first or the twenty-fourth country to make some sort of resolution regarding the Ottoman Empire's treatment of their resident Armenian population. Perhaps these other countries did not have national interests in play in the region. They weren't waging wars in Iraq. They weren't facing the complication of a potential Turkish invasion of the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Oh, Speaker Pelosi, what happened in Rwanda and is happening in Darfur is not genocide. To be genocide the action must be state sponsored, state executed extermination directed against an identifiable racial, ethnic, or religious minority living within the territory effectively controlled by that state. Rwanda, Darfur, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, none of these were or are genocide. They were and are mass killings.

Quit cheapening the language, Ms Pelosi. Stop distorting history, Speaker. And, more than anything else, don't pretend you are doing something good for our troops in Iraq when all you are actually doing is putting them in harm's way.

Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Don't Mix!

The Democrats in Congress seem hell-bent on proving one more time that one very important lesson of history still holds true. Playing domestic politics with an important foreign policy consideration is a very, very bad idea--no matter how well it may play with the folks back home.

House majority leader Steny Hoyer has blown off the serious and well founded objections of SecDef Gates and SecStat Rice to the passage of a resolution declaring the killing of Armenians by the Turkish military between 1915 and 1923 as "genocide." Mr Hoyer (who has no direct experience with foreign policy to the Geek's knowledge) dismissed the warnings of Gates and Rice regarding serious damage to US national security interests as a mere "blip."

Get a grip, Mr Hoyer!

This is a hot button, maybe the hot button issue with the Turks both in government and on the street. Passage of this ill-considered feel-good measure would injure the US relations with Turkey not only today but into the future. Congress should bear in mind just how critical Turkey has been and will continue to be in US policy calculations in the region.

Congress should also keep in mind just how poorly the US has treated Turkey over the years. Years ago we tilted against Turkey in the conflict with Greece over Cyprus. More recently we have not shown anything approximating even-handedness as the conflict has re-emerged now centering on Cypriot development of off-shore oil fields.

We have leaned heavily on the Turks not to pursue an oil and gas pipeline development project with Tehran. We have interfered with Turkey's legitimate right to self-defense against the Kurdish insurgent group, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). We got ourselves in a totally unnecessary snit over Ankara's unwillingness to allow us to use Turkish bases for a part of of our 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Overall, it is not surprising that in a recent international poll, Turks showed the lowest approval rate of the United States of all countries--something on the order of nine percent. It is not surprising that the same poll showed a significant number of Turks believed that the US was cranking up an invasion directed against them!

We need Turkey as a close, willing, and effective partner in the Second Cold War--the struggle against Islamism. We need Turkey as a close, willing, and effective partner in our effort to clean up our mess in Iraq and leave a functioning state in our wake as we leave. We even need to look to Turkey as the only likely locus for a true Islamic reformation--a melding of timeless Islam with the realities of the world today and into the future.

There is a lot more at stake in Turkey than merely access to our bases. There is a lot more at stake in Turkey than the immediate course of events in Iraq, or even in the region. Turkey is a key player in most of our concerns throughout the Mideast and Islamic areas.

Politicians may only want to keep the folks back home happy and in a voting mood. That's how the word bunk, deriving from the earlier bunkum, entered the American dictionary. One hundred fifty or so years ago there was a congresswallah from North Carolina who made speeches about one absurdity after another and who spoke in opposition to measures for which he voted. When asked why, the man answered, "It's for the folks in Buncomb county."

Bunk--that's a good word for the fancy speeches of those who support the counterproductive, nationally self-destructive, feel-good resolution on Armenian genocide. Rather than voting for these critters who wish to apply a word that has become dangerously overused in recent years, the people back home in the various "Buncomb counties" of this country should toss the gripless, brain-dead purported representatives out.

Of course that won't happen. Bunkum always sells well. It helps on election day. And, it only hurts our nation's interests and future.

So, why worry?