The bill has 226 co-sponsors. It calls on Mr Bush “to accurately characterise the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1.5m Armenians as genocide”. The massacres were carried out by Ottoman troops beginning in 1915, before the creation of the republic of Turkey. Turkey rejects characterisation of the deaths as genocide and takes diplomatic and other measures against countries that adopt such a stance.As many readers know, I'm 1/2 Armenian. My grandmother talked about the slaughter of the Armenians. As no one else was talking about it, we didn't know what to think. I was but a child, and she would often tell us stories far beyond our wildest imaginations. My grandfather's people were fearless mountain folk--shepherds. His sister shaved her head and bound her breasts and fought against the Turks. That's all I know.
A few years ago, I was working with a professor at VCU on a continuing education contract for MD's. I noted that his name was Armenian (they all end in "yan" or "ian") and told him that I was 1/2 Armenian. We felt immediate kinship. He was close to my age. He told me that his grandparents were survivors--but that they were deeply affected. Very melancholy--a state from which they rarely emerged. I told him the stories that my grandmother told us about the death marches across the desert. When he left our meeting, he hugged me--a hug of kinship and understanding. He later called me and apologized if it seemed forward or unprofessional. I said that I understood where the emotion came from, and that I had appreciated his sincere expression of it.
The massacre, which purportedly claimed 2/3's of the Armenian population, was a terrible thing. I do not believe in revisionist history, but I also do not believe that it is necessary to spend time sending bills such as this through Congress. History is replete with such examples of horror toward others, as is our current time. If we were to spend our political energy demanding acknowledgment of such issues, we'd have little time to much else. Our own cultural history in North America toward the Native Americans should cause us enough shame that we should be loathe to point the finger elsewhere.
I don't say any of this to minimize the horror inflicted on 1.5mil people. However, I'd much rather see cooperative measures on economic or environmental issues that forge unity rather than focus on that which is a resurrection of past injustices and oppressions that cause separation.
6 comments:
The goals of this useless Democratic Congress is to send bills to the President such as this to make him seem "uncaring". Expect more of this crap as the election nears.
I don't consider this a useless Democratic Congress, but I do object to this.
Leisa,
An open mind is a wonderful thing to possess,as the world grows older maybe, just maybe ENOUGH people will mature to a point that such things will not ever happen again.
v---6
Most of us come from families who suffered at the hands of others for political, cultural, religious, etc. reasons. I do.
It is far, far better to recognize the past but not (if you will) nourish it.
"Nourishing" only means that one remains helplessly locked in an unchangeable past instead of looking ahead to shape a renewed --and hopefully better -- future.
I agree with your point, Leisa.
many of our grandparents lived in a harsher time...i had an armenian classmate who must have heard stories like yours from her parents, although she never shared them with me...
my paternal grandfather (who i never met) was a prominent political figure in shanghai, accused of collaborating with the japanese...(my dad's recollection of the of the story is that he was willing to do whatever it took to avoid war)...and was summarily executed by the nationalists (dad read the account the following day in the papers, and always loved the part about refusing a blindfold and finishing a cigarette before facing the barrels)...
the older i get, the more death, the manner of death, and the legacy one leaves behind all begin to invade my thoughts...we're not all just perplexed investors...the need to understand everything would take more than a few lifetimes, which may be what eternity is meant to provide...
wow, guess i'll stop here before this train of thought starts to take off ;)
2nd_ave
The following appeared in the October 2007 issue of First Things (www.firstthings.com):
"• Our friends over at the New Criterion have put out a big anthology including the editors’ choice of essays and reviews published in its first twenty-five years. The book is Counterpoints and is edited by, as you might expect, the editors of the New Criterion, Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer. In their introduction, they quote this by Evelyn Waugh:
"Barbarism is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. Unremitting effort is needed to keep men living together at peace; there is only a margin of error left over for experiment however beneficent. Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on. . . . The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls, we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history."
I think the Waugh quote is apposite to this post and comments.
Post a Comment