Dangerous Middle Eastern Politicking

I don't know how many of you have been following this, but I have with a fair amount of interest as a little-known champion of spreading awareness of the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks. Basically for the same usual reasons -- they weren't turks, therefore they must be killed. Estimates range from the hundreds of thousands (low end) to well over 1.5 million (high end). Nobody really pays attention to this because the Nazis committed a much worse genocide only a couple decades later...which I think is appalling, really.

Anyway, the news is that Congress finally got around to passing a bill that basically protested this and said that Turkey should apologise.

And Turkey of course told us to basically go .... fill in the blank.

On the one hand, I approve. It's nice to make a protest even if it's like 90 years late. And it's irrational that Turkey should refuse; as I understand it their objection is more to the use of the term 'genocide' rather than denying it happened. Whatev. I guess maybe they're offended that we interfere in their internal affairs? It'd be like if germany passed a resolution condemning our treatment of native americans and demanding we apologise. I suspect many people would think that the germans should mind their own business.

But on the other hand, I can't help but feel this is a democratic trick to make the president look bad. And while I'm generally in favor of making the president look bad, I'm definitely not in favor of using things like this to do it. Turkey's our major ally over there, despite some friction occasionally, and it would be pretty not good for them to be really ticked at us. So the dems pass this bill, because who can NOT sign it? If the president refuses to preserve turkish friendship, then he looks like a supporter of genocide. And if he signs it then Turkey will get all up in arms. My prediction is that he'll refuse to sign it but come up with a sneaky escape hatch...he'll find some completely unrelated thing in the bill (there's always something) and claim that that's what he really objects to.

Le grumble.