The Turks acting like a bunch of woosy little babies? The Turks? The greatest fighters in the world? DELICATE & SENSITIVE?
Oh dear -- the US Congress has actually come out and declared that the Armenian Genocide is/was actually genocide*.
And the government of Turkey, acting like precious little flowers have screamed in outrage, threatened our alliance, threatened our soldiers in Iraq, and generally acted like a bunch of over-sensitive shits.
They recalled their ambassador. ("Oh no, we didn't recall him -- he just came home for two weeks for discussions and instructions.")
They sent their flack out to weasel for them.
Soner Cagaptay, a Senior Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- Turkish Research Program, appears on talk shows.
This morning (October 14, 2007) on CSPAN's Washington Journal, Mr. Cagaptay was such a weasel he made the reputation of Turks as great brave soldiers seem like so much bullshit.
"A lot of Armenians died... It was World War I, and it's hard to tell what happened..."
OK -- "But to call it genocide -- Genocide is a specific legal term and to call it Genocide slanders the Turks and" -- (oh get the chutzpah here) -- "diminishes the horror of TRUE genocide such as the NAZI's committed on the **Jews."
First of all the slaughter of the Armenians began LONG BEFORE WWI, 20 years or more before, and was so extreme BEFORE the mass slaughter that some 50,000 Armenians were granted entry into the USA starting in 1890.
But the real date when things began in earnest was April 24, 1915 when the Turks rounded up 250 Armenian intellectual leaders. At that time, there were some 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.
The little mouthpiece told CSPAN that "Of course Armenians died, but the Turks merely relocated them from Anatolia."
He failed to mention the fact that the Turks didn't provide any supplies for the long trip -- no food, no water, and that by August, the international Press was writing of the road littered with corpses, and certain death ahead for those who had survived.
And once in their open air relocation camps, they were slaughtered -- shot or beaten to death the traditional way brave soldiers take out unarmed civilians. But also by mass burning, poisoning, and drowning.
There were 2 million Armenians living in Turkey before WWI -- between 1915 and by 1917, 1.5 million had been killed. And the few left alive were permitted to come to the USA to join family and friends.
But this little talking turd, counting on American unfamiliarity with Ottoman history, would have us believe there was no such thing as Musa Dagh, known to many from Franz Werfel's book, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh about the resistance fighting that took place there, a book published in German in 1934 and intended as a warning to the Jews in Germany.
It may be apocryphal, the story has been told many times that Hitler, when asked about the world's reaction to the slaughter of Jews in Europe was confident there would be NO reaction -- "After all, who cared about the Armenians?"
And Cagaptay would have us believe that Vostanik Manoog Adoyan hadn't witnessed mass slaughter in his home town of Van by the Turks in 1915 and fled with his mother and sisters, only to see his mother starve to death, then fled to America and changed his name to Arshile Gorky to escape continuing threats, becoming a major figure in the world of modern art and bearing witness to the atrocities that little asshole denies took place.
So fuck the Turks and their nasty threats ("We're your loyal allies***, but if you say bad things about us we'll kill your soldiers.")
Let congress go farther and condemn anyone who denies the Armenian Holocaust as an accessory after the fact.
******************
*Bill Maher and Jon Stewart thought it was funny that our chickenshit congress actually had the balls to come out and condemn the Ottoman Empire. And it is. But not as much of a grim joke as the Turks still trying to deny it.
------------------------
**Oh yeah, his oh-so-real sympathy for the plight of the Jews.
I worked with a fellow named Aziz back in the 60's -- very civilized, well-educated, son of a Turkish diplomat. One evening he told me about something that had happened when he was 10. His father had taken him down to the center of Istanbul to the street where the Jewish merchants' stores were, to watch while the mob dragged shopkeepers out and hanged them from the lamp-posts. I
"WHAT? Why would they do that?"
"Because they had short-changed people."
"And they were killed for that?"
"Well, yes --they short-changed people, stole from them. They were Jews."
"I'm a Jew."
"Yes, but you don't steal from people."
----------------
***Such loyal allies that in 2003 they refused to allow the USA to trans-ship supplies through Turkey into Iraq, a denial often credited with allowing the insurgency to grow much larger than it otherwise might have.
I have NO PROBLEM with the Turks having been against this criminal war, but come on, boys, don't pretend. Of course, if they're still denying what was done more than 100 years ago, why would they admit being two-headed serpents only a few years ago?
********************
And to my old high school pal, Dieron, aside from the great outrageous pranks and those bizarre late-night egg roll insanities at Harry Chin's, thanks for telling me about the history.
****************
And the government of Turkey, acting like precious little flowers have screamed in outrage, threatened our alliance, threatened our soldiers in Iraq, and generally acted like a bunch of over-sensitive shits.
They recalled their ambassador. ("Oh no, we didn't recall him -- he just came home for two weeks for discussions and instructions.")
They sent their flack out to weasel for them.
Soner Cagaptay, a Senior Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- Turkish Research Program, appears on talk shows.
This morning (October 14, 2007) on CSPAN's Washington Journal, Mr. Cagaptay was such a weasel he made the reputation of Turks as great brave soldiers seem like so much bullshit.
"A lot of Armenians died... It was World War I, and it's hard to tell what happened..."
OK -- "But to call it genocide -- Genocide is a specific legal term and to call it Genocide slanders the Turks and" -- (oh get the chutzpah here) -- "diminishes the horror of TRUE genocide such as the NAZI's committed on the **Jews."
First of all the slaughter of the Armenians began LONG BEFORE WWI, 20 years or more before, and was so extreme BEFORE the mass slaughter that some 50,000 Armenians were granted entry into the USA starting in 1890.
But the real date when things began in earnest was April 24, 1915 when the Turks rounded up 250 Armenian intellectual leaders. At that time, there were some 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.
The little mouthpiece told CSPAN that "Of course Armenians died, but the Turks merely relocated them from Anatolia."
He failed to mention the fact that the Turks didn't provide any supplies for the long trip -- no food, no water, and that by August, the international Press was writing of the road littered with corpses, and certain death ahead for those who had survived.
And once in their open air relocation camps, they were slaughtered -- shot or beaten to death the traditional way brave soldiers take out unarmed civilians. But also by mass burning, poisoning, and drowning.
There were 2 million Armenians living in Turkey before WWI -- between 1915 and by 1917, 1.5 million had been killed. And the few left alive were permitted to come to the USA to join family and friends.
But this little talking turd, counting on American unfamiliarity with Ottoman history, would have us believe there was no such thing as Musa Dagh, known to many from Franz Werfel's book, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh about the resistance fighting that took place there, a book published in German in 1934 and intended as a warning to the Jews in Germany.
It may be apocryphal, the story has been told many times that Hitler, when asked about the world's reaction to the slaughter of Jews in Europe was confident there would be NO reaction -- "After all, who cared about the Armenians?"
And Cagaptay would have us believe that Vostanik Manoog Adoyan hadn't witnessed mass slaughter in his home town of Van by the Turks in 1915 and fled with his mother and sisters, only to see his mother starve to death, then fled to America and changed his name to Arshile Gorky to escape continuing threats, becoming a major figure in the world of modern art and bearing witness to the atrocities that little asshole denies took place.
So fuck the Turks and their nasty threats ("We're your loyal allies***, but if you say bad things about us we'll kill your soldiers.")
Let congress go farther and condemn anyone who denies the Armenian Holocaust as an accessory after the fact.
******************
*Bill Maher and Jon Stewart thought it was funny that our chickenshit congress actually had the balls to come out and condemn the Ottoman Empire. And it is. But not as much of a grim joke as the Turks still trying to deny it.
------------------------
**Oh yeah, his oh-so-real sympathy for the plight of the Jews.
I worked with a fellow named Aziz back in the 60's -- very civilized, well-educated, son of a Turkish diplomat. One evening he told me about something that had happened when he was 10. His father had taken him down to the center of Istanbul to the street where the Jewish merchants' stores were, to watch while the mob dragged shopkeepers out and hanged them from the lamp-posts. I
"WHAT? Why would they do that?"
"Because they had short-changed people."
"And they were killed for that?"
"Well, yes --they short-changed people, stole from them. They were Jews."
"I'm a Jew."
"Yes, but you don't steal from people."
----------------
***Such loyal allies that in 2003 they refused to allow the USA to trans-ship supplies through Turkey into Iraq, a denial often credited with allowing the insurgency to grow much larger than it otherwise might have.
I have NO PROBLEM with the Turks having been against this criminal war, but come on, boys, don't pretend. Of course, if they're still denying what was done more than 100 years ago, why would they admit being two-headed serpents only a few years ago?
********************
And to my old high school pal, Dieron, aside from the great outrageous pranks and those bizarre late-night egg roll insanities at Harry Chin's, thanks for telling me about the history.
****************
posted by Saintperle at
9:43 AM
