Posted on 08/22/2007 5:46:38 AM PDT by SJackson
The Aztecs and Nazis had nuthin’ on dirty ol’ Mo’
Unfortunately for liberal Jews the Divine Election of Israel has been replaced by the uniqueness of Jewish suffering.
My default is to be against any Muslims that war on Christians, Jews, Hindus etc. That’s my rule of thumb and it’s never failed me
In my book no Muslim wars have ever been just, going all the way back to Muhammad, the first Muslim mass murderer
(1) The Armenians did not stage a "full-scale uprising" of any description.
What a ridiculous claim. Even the anti-Armenian Turkish propaganda at the time didn't make such preposterous assertions.
(2) The Turks were not losing the war in May of 1915 when they began deporting and slaughtering Armenians. In fact, the Turks began the genocide one month after their great victory over the British and French forces at Gallipoli. The genocide began at the high tide of Turkish military success.
When you use a war to leverage your rebellion, and fail, bad consequences follow (see Irish, Cromwell).
The Irish were loyal to their king, Charles I, who had been illegally deposed by the rebel Cromwell, an illegitimate dictator. This is perhaps the worst analogy in the world.
There is no question that thousands of Armenians were killed, many of whom had nothing to do with the insurrection, but “no reason at all” is unsupportable.
Thousands? Hundreds of thousands at the very least. And again, there was no insurrection - the official Turkish excuse was that the Turkish invasion of Armenia failed because the Armenians living in Turkey were not enthusiastic enough in supplying the troops who were killing their fellow Armenians and not enthusiastic enough in volunteering to kill their fellow Armenians.
They are changing policy now because of something that happened almost a century ago. That’s about like changing policy toward Spain because we just realized the Maine had be sunk. Or perhaps a better analogy - changing relations with Britian because of their treatment of the Boers.
Of course, the ADL is roughly the equivalent of CAIR.
If I had any talent at all in “rap”, I’d take that line and run with it ...
The idea that truth is based on consensus is fundamentally. The truth is still true even if no man believes it - it is an objective reality outside of perception and consent.
fundamentally flawed.
Not entirely successful perhaps, but Henry Morgenthau, the US Ambassador who resigned due to American inaction, and Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term and was instrumental in the passage of the Genocide Treaty would disagre.
Perhaps you'd like to expand on your conclusion, and enlighten the rest of us.
Truth cannot be derived from a consensus.
PAR35: They are changing policy now because of something that happened almost a century ago. Of course, the ADL is roughly the equivalent of CAIR.
IMO it's not something they should have a policy on, but it's more of a clarification than a change, due to their hesitancy to support a Congressional resolution condemning Turkey.
Since the ADL doesn't support terrorist groups, imo the equivalency with CAIR is false.
Then you should share with the thread, since you are the only researcher who believes that the Armenians of Turkey waged a "full-scale insurrection" against their government during World War I.
and I’m with Bernard Lewis on this one; it was not a “genocide.”
Bernard Lewis agrees that 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by their government solely for the crime of being Armenian.
What he says is that the Turkish government did not set out in the beginning to kill all the Armenians in Turkey in the same way that the Nazis set out to kill all Jews in Germany - the results were similar, but the Turks were originally only planning to murder as many Armenians as necessary to compel obedience from the remainder.
In my mind, that is a distinction without a difference: it was a government coordinated slaughter of more than a million people conducted solely on the basis of heritage.
Entirely responsible, it was just retribution for their having started WWI and WWII, among other things, per Hitler's logic.
It's worth noting the murder isn't necessary to qualify as genocide, rather the destruction, in it's entirety or in part, of a cultural/religious/racial group. As a crime in the post war period, intent would be a factor.
Prior to coining the term genocide, Lemkin referred to it as Acts of Barbarity, and recognized an additional crime against humanity, never embraced by treaty, Acts of Vandalism, as in shelling Budda and burning Churches and Synagogues. Translation's of some of his early works here
I. GENOCIDE - A NEW TERM AND NEW CONCEPTION FOR DESTRUCTION OF NATIONS
New conceptions require new terms. By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homocide, infanticide, etc.(1) Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.
I will not disagree. Truth is truth, and there have been many throughout the ages that attempted to harness the power of what is truth. Again to me Pilate asked a rhetorical question, the majority certainly had already made up their minds what truth was, so hence that question... What is truth? "Truth" is said to set one free, well free from what? Truth was also likened to taste like honey but made the belly bitter.
So why is there still contention about what happened in Armenia? Is there no truth about what literally took place?
It was a Muslim on Christian genocide plain and simple.
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