Why the Armenian Genocide matters

I suspect that for most Americans the fuss over a House committee's approval of a bill calling for the United States government to call the mass killings of Armenians during WWI a genocide must have seemed like much ado about nothing. Why the big deal about something that happened almost 100 years ago? Before a few years ago, I would have asked the same question.

I think I've written before on this blog about the time when members of my church in NY gifted me with their stories of the family members killed in the Armenian Genocide. Through their words, I began to glimpse what it is like to have the entire generation of your parents killed and then to have the world ignore the tragedy. Despite the alarms of Christian missionaries and diplomats at the time, the American government did little more than shrug its shoulders at the mass killings. Following World War I, American governments of both poliltical parties have refused to even acknowledge that the mass killings happened, because the modern state of Turkey which inherited the crimes of the Ottoman Empire refused to admit the terrible event happened and because Turkey proved to be such a crucial ally--first against the fascists, then the communists, then Saddam Hussein and now in Gulf War II--America will do nothing to offend its government.

All the while, the survivors of the genocide--a ruthlessly orchestrated series of mass deportations to work camps and then eventual executions that the Nazis used as a blueprint for the Holocaust (The best book I know of on the subject is The Burning Tigris by Peter Balakian. It documents that the genocide was systematic and well-planned.)--along with the children of Armenians who did not survive have waited for someone simply to acknowledge that the genocide happened at all.

The Armenian Genocide does not matter to you, unless it was your family that died in it--or unless you care about justice--or believe that those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it.

Today, our local paper (always an astute observer of international events--not!) ran an editorial cartoon showing Democrats messing with Turkish history because they could not make any new history of their own. It is true that the bill is coming up now, because Democrats who have large numbers of Armenians in their constituencies hold places of power, such as Nancy Pelosi, but that does not mean that the cause is any less just. What is horrifying is to hear that Turkey has hired lobbying firms to influence Congress--firms that have big names like Richard Gephart and other former big wigs. Money trumps acknowledging a genocide every time, I guess.

As is so often ironically the case, the only voice out there decrying the absurdity of our government's position in the face of injustice was Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. The good news, I guess, Is that after almost a century of nobody caring about the murder of 1.5 million Armenians, the subject has finally risen to the level of public consciousness that The Daily Show is commenting on it. (See my post with the video.)

For Christians, the subject of the Armenian Genocide should strike a deep chord. The Armenian people have an ancient history that includes an early conversion to Christianity. That history not only includes the Armenian Orthodox Church, but also close ties with many Protestant churches thanks to missionary work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is, of course, beside the point that Christians should care simply because there is a genocide involved, but then most Christians in the West seem not to care about holocausts today--e.g. Rwanda, Darfur, etc.

Grace and Peace,

Chase