A Matter For Historians
Whether the massacres of up to 1.5 million Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1915 constitute “genocide,” as a nonbinding House resolution declares, is a matter for historians. ~The Wall Street Journal
I have said before how tired I am of this sort of dodge. The purpose of these evasions is simply to declare the past irrelevant and history the province of academics. As these people see it, it should neither inform public policy or public discourse nor be treated seriously. In a way this is worse than distorting or misusing the past as the active denialists do: this declares the past off limits for use or understanding in the present. Except, of course, when these very same people want to invoke the “lessons of history” c. 1975 or 1938 to justify their latest foreign boondoggle. In those cases, History must be acknowledged and followed, and we must march in the direction shown by History.
If I were to say, “whether the killing fields in Cambodia constituted genocide is a matter for historians,” I would be rightly excoriated as a moral cretin and an ignoramus. The same treatment ought to be meted out to those who make these equivocal, “who can really say?” kinds of arguments, but this view flourishes. It flourishes partly, as we all know, because there are many people, most of whom couldn’t have cared less about offending allies, including the Turks, five years ago, who now see the Turkish alliance as so important that it cannot be endangered by anything so “trivial” as historical truth. I suspect, but I cannot definitely prove, that another element is a weird, unseemly desire to keep the Nazis in the public imagination as the fons et origo of genocidal killing (which would also have to conveniently ignore the genocide of the Ukrainians) to sustain the mythology surrounding the entire WWII period.
When most historians affirm that an event was genocide, i.e., state-organised and planned attempted extermination of a people or group, the “matter” has been settled on that point at least. We are supposed to believe that the Armenian genocide is somehow more in doubt or the answers are less knowable than they were in Cambodia. This isn’t because most of the almighty historians remain in doubt, but because there are non-historians who are willing to wink at the genocide denial of a relative few scholars and invest these few deniers with an authority they would not grant were the subject a widely recognised and well-known genocide. Once there is a general consensus among historians, does that not remove the “matter” from the realm of controversy? Is it not then incumbent on decent citizens and their representatives to acknowledge the reality that the historians are describing?
Cross-posted at Cliopatria
The vast majority of historians can agree upon the existence of a near-infinite amount of historical misdeeds. Why is it the business of Congress to pronounce upon any of them, much less the historical genocides of our allies, who we need at the moment for strategic reasons?
— Jamie Carroll · Oct 21, 09:27 PM · #
Ultimately, it’s probably none of Congress’ business, strictly speaking, but of all the things that Congress does that it shouldn’t do I really can’t fathom why anyone would have a particularly strong objection to this. Also, I view Turkey’s threats very dimly, as I think everyone in America should. The resolution would not carry any tangible costs for Americans if Ankara were acting as a rational ally of the United States. Washington’s willingness to cave to irrational blackmail of this kind ought to be an embarrassment to all of us.
The resolution is also entirely consistent with what then-Candidate Bush said that he would do once elected. His refusal to call the event by its proper name is not only contrary to what he said he would do, but it gives cover to a regime that prosecutes its own citizens for exercising free speech. If there were not a concerted effort on the part of genocide deniers to promote their propaganda, and if our government were not willing to wink at this propaganda, I would probably say that the resolution is unnecessary. But there is such an effort, and some members of our government are willing, so it seems legitimate to me that another part of our government goes on record to make the necessary correction. Allies should not be in the business of extorting one another, and just as we were wrong to harrass our allies over Iraq Ankara is wrong to do what it is doing today.
The President already commemorates the events of the genocide every year—but he refuses to call it a genocide. It is not as if Congress is dredging this issue up out of nowhere. They are calling on the President to call the thing by its proper name in the speech that he already gives on this subject every April 24. It would be ludicrous to claim that the resolution is introducing some innovation in practice or some new “interference” in Turkish affairs. The only difference between the way the commemoration has been done in the past and what the resolution calls for is that the latter is far more historically accurate.
By the same standard, what business does the President have to commemorate the genocide every year? Why did he go to the Holocaust Museum in April? Congress is doing nothing here that the President does not already do on a regular basis.
— Daniel Larison · Oct 21, 10:00 PM · #