The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, famous for donning a head scarf earlier this year to commune for peace with the Syrians, has now concluded that this is the perfect moment to pass a Congressional resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915. Problem is, Turkey in 2007 has it within its power to damage the growing success of the U.S. effort in Iraq. We would like to assume this is not Speaker Pelosi's goal.Yet Pelosi now wants to pass this resolution that is almost certain to ignite the Turks; very likely in a way that acts against the interests of the United States in supporting our troops in Iraq.
To be clear: We write that we would like to assume, rather than that we do assume, because we are no longer able to discern whether the Speaker's foreign-policy intrusions are merely misguided or are consciously intended to cause a U.S. policy failure in Iraq.
Where is the upside in October 2007 to this Armenian resolution?
The bill is opposed by eight former U.S. Secretaries of State, including Madeleine Albright. After Tom Lantos's House Foreign Affairs Committee voted out the resolution last week, Turkey recalled its ambassador from Washington. Turkey serves as a primary transit hub for U.S. equipment going into both Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Kurdish terrorist group PKK killed 13 Turkish conscripts last week near the border with Iraq, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asked the parliament to approve a huge deployment of the army along the border, threatening an incursion into Kurdish-controlled Iraq. This of course is the one manifestly successful region of post-Saddam Iraq. In a situation teetering on a knife-edge, President Bush has been asking Mr. Erdogan to show restraint on the Iraq border.
What possible purpose could there be for introducing this resolution now, other than to torpedo what appears now to be undeniable progress in Iraq? As I alluded to yesterday, I have never seen a more deceptive (to the American public)--yet blatant--attempt to sabotage a US military at WAR by a sitting US Congress. I can't think of a more shameless and despicable attempt in US history.
Ralph Peters comments further:
Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.
That's what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn't about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It's a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals.
The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won't be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.
The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we'd be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.
It's a brilliant ploy - the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they're responding to their Armenian-American constituents - while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.
For the Democrats in Congress, it looks like a cost-free strategy. For our troops? When did the Dems give a damn about our troops? This resolution isn't a stand in favor of historical justice. It's an end-run that ducks behind the bench. It's one of the most cynical betrayals in our legislative history - of our troops, of Armenian-Americans, of the Kurds under threat from the Turkish military and of the people of Iraq.
We can't let Pelosi & Co. get away with this one. We need to call the Dems on it and make it clear that we, the people, know what they're trying to do.
Right now there are hundreds of new "IED Resistant" Armored carriers on the runways in Turkey. American soldiers need those carriers so that AMERICAN LIVES can be saved on the battlefield. Yet Pelosi and the Defeatocrats seem to care less about the loss of American lives than they do about sabotaging American success in the region. In fact, based on this resolution, I would go so far as to say that Nancy Pelosi WANTS more US deaths to occur to turn up pressure again against the war. And if she is successful, every drop of American blood that is lost because of a Turkish rebellion against the US is squarely on the hands of the Bolsheviks in the Democrat Congress.
Folks, this is beyond the pale; this is where politics ends and treason begins.
If ever there was a time to write your Congressmen and Senators, this would be it. And perhaps a love note to Nancy Pelosi would be in order as well.
UPDATE: Thomas Sowell calls it Sabotage in Wartime.