<p>Editor’s Note: Is it fair and balanced for the Bush administration to help Turkey deny responsibility for the historical genocide against the Armenians, while whipping up war fever against Iran because its president expresses doubts about the historical accuracy of the Nazi genocide against the Jews? </p>
<p>The Bush administration is attempting to soothe the Turkish government’s apoplectic reaction to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s label of “genocide” on Turkey’s slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, which occurred almost a century ago.</p>
<p>The administration fears that an enraged Turkish ally, already threatening to invade northern Iraq in order to suppress armed Turkish Kurd rebels seeking refuge there, will also cut off U.S. access to Turkish air bases and roads used to re-supply U.S. forces in Iraq.</p>
<p>The administration essentially wants to allow the Turks to continue to deny a historical fact that preceded even the existence of the current Turkish system of government . . .</p>
<p>If the United States is going to criticize other countries’ behavior, both historical and current, it should eliminate the double standard at home and abroad, and clean up its own act first.</p>
<p>Well then the answer is simple. Seek to limit those hypocrisies or face the scorn of the intelligent when you call yourself a “beacon of freedom and justice”</p>
<p>Sorry… by “you” did you mean the United States, or its citizenry, or what? I’ll assume you didn’t mean me, since (as it says in my location info) I’m from Canada.</p>
<p>And in other big news today, the Pope is Catholic and bears poop in the woods!</p>
<p>I would hazard to suggest that, in the history of the world, no nation, anywhere, has put historical accuracy and consistency of principles over immediate expediency where foreign policy is concerned, especially when it involves an important ally or antagonist in an ongoing war. That’s just life.</p>
<p>My instinct is that, almost without regard to one’s personal political position, having good relations with Turkey this week is a lot more important to the United States and to its people than taking a principled stand on whether Turkish oppression of Armenians a century ago constituted “genocide”. (There are exceptions, of course, people who would put principle above expediency here and in other matters, but they tend not to get elected to do that.) And, in fairness, the Turks aren’t threatening, explicitly or implicitly, to nuke Armenia anytime soon, just as the Japanese government (which doesn’t even have the degree of continuity with Japanese governments of the 30s-40s that the Turks have) isn’t much of a threat to rape Nanking again in my lifetime. Iran’s president, who could easily command a small nuclear arsenal a few years from now, is talking about attacking a foreign country (and ally of ours) in the foreseeable future. So – although you and I probably agree that the reaction to Iran is overblown and that the Turks are getting kid-glove treatment – there are some pretty important, principled differences among these cases.</p>
<p>The benefits of breast-beating and atonement for the sins of past generations is something I’m still learning about. My first reaction has usually been that it doesn’t serve much purpose, and that making it the norm will only encourage oppressive regimes to cling to power more desperately to avoid accounting for their crimes. But I also see the passion with which people in Argentina, or Chile, and elsewhere have pursued this, and I don’t doubt that, if the process goes well, the world is better off for it. </p>
<p>Also: I don’t think we (the U.S.) are quite as disingenuous as the Turks or the Japanese, but I don’t think we use the word “genocide” much when we teach our children about how we dealt with indigenous people here in North America in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Our hands are not so clean that we have free rein to wag our fingers at other countries for insufficient acknowledgement of long-past brutality.</p>
<p>US and GB allied themselves with Soviet Union (led by despotic dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin) to defeat Germany (led by despotic dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler).</p>
<p>(Checking the current officeholders in the US…) Nope, Osama and company are still not in the US government. </p>
<p>Unless you are making the somewhat fanciful suggestion that the administration has enrolled Osama and his buddies as secret State Department consultants? Possible, but unlikely.</p>
<p>Or, you could be suggesting that by killing thousands of civilians through the use of explosives (and airplanes) in the United States, Iraq, Indonesia, Spain, Tunisia, Pakistan, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Algeria, and Kenya the Islamo-Fascists are manipulating US foreign policy through the press, you might just be right. Has anyone noticed that Moslem terrorists spend most of their time bombing other Moslems? The only thing they hate more than western countries is Moslems who disagree with them.</p>
<p>The supposed geniuses here and in the CIA think that it was a good idea to fund the enemy of your enemy and to have a hypocritcal foreign policy agenda. They are the ones that created Osama Bin Laden. Therefore they are responsible for 9/11.</p>
<p>Blowback is a term now broadly used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.[citation needed]</p>
<p>In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informative only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts.[citation needed] In looser terms, it can encompass all operational aspects. In this context, it can thus mean retaliation as the result of actions undertaken by nations.</p>
<p>The phrase is believed to have been coined by the CIA, in reference to the shrapnel that often flies back when shooting an automatic firearm. The word appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the 1953 Iranian coup d’</p>
<p>Why did Guiliani get so uptight when Ron Paul mentioned blowback as a contributing factor of 911? It makes perfect sense that covert operations and all the various messing around with other governments that our government does would have some consequences.</p>
<p>How so? Those are 2 completely separate viewpoints. Blowback does not mean ‘did it’ it just means acknowledging consequences (actions by those we’ve meddled with).</p>
<p>Yeah, barrons, I’m with leal - the two are basically not at all connected, except insofar as lots of nuts hold that the federal government caused the attacks - by actually comitting them.</p>
<p>It’s pretty much common sense to say that the attacks were blowblack. I mean, come, the US has at one point or another messed with most other countries’ politics. Is the fact that this eventually had an adverse consequences surprising? (Note, that that doesn’t mean that I consider “yeah, but the US messed with our country, so we’ll kill their civilians” to be any kind of justification for such an attack)</p>
<p>Most definitely not a justification, but possibly a partial explanation. I don’t understand why those who deny blowback are unwilling to ‘know thine enemy.’</p>
<p>It’s like stirring up a hornet’s nest. If you take a stick and stir it up, they are going to attack. It’s their nature. If you are going to go messing with hornets or rattlesnakes, it’s good to understand their nature.</p>