Support for the Armenian Genocide Act is slipping, among both Democrats and Republicans. Some noteworthy quotes from the New York Times:
“This happened a long time ago and I don’t know whether it was a massacre or a genocide, that is beside the point,” said Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is urging Ms. Pelosi to keep the resolution from the floor. “The point is, we have to deal with today’s world.”
“I think there was genocide in Turkey in 1915 but I am gravely concerned about the timing,” said Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat.
“This vote came face to face with the reality on the ground in that region of the world,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and an opponent of the resolution.
Representative Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Republican who dropped his backing on Tuesday, said: “Nothing changes the fact that mass killings and unspeakable acts of brutality occurred. However, passing this nonbinding resolution at this critical time would be a destabilizing action when the United States needs the help of its allies, including Turkey, in fighting the global war on terror.”
“Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over something that happened a century ago and maybe this isn’t a good time to be doing that,” said Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who dropped his sponsorship of the resolution on Monday night.
“We simply cannot allow the grievances of the past, as real as they may be, to in any way derail our efforts to prevent further atrocities for future history books,” said Representative Wally Herger, Republican of California.
It will be interesting to see how Pelosi and Lantos try to squirm their way out of this.
I don’t believe for a second that Murtha wasn’t one of the original authors of this little bit of nasty attempted sabotage. Now he’s running for cover… hopefully to Okinawa.
sad day when the mighty US is beholden to the ego of a third world craphole like turkey. sad indeed
They won’t have to “squirm” out of anything. The media will simply go silent on the issue as if it never happened and the majority of Americans will forget all about it in about 6 weeks. Well, actually, the majority of Americans have never heard of the Armenian Genocide bill because the majority don’t watch news or read the paper. They get their news from YouTube and MySpace.
This isn’t common anything, except commonplace capitulation to continued outrages from the depths of islam.
Okay, so is Jimmy Carter going to argue with the use of the term “genocide” as he recently did relative to official U.S. pronouncements on Africa?
One suspects not.