Soccer Dad

Friends don't let friends become self-righteous legislators

Deja Vu notes the irony of US-Turkish relations:

Morally the US Congress is right in its demand that Turkey acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Morally Turkey is right to reserve the right to uproote PKK terrorist camps in Northern Iraq.

Strategic reality demands that the US take the opposite positions.

And when one does what Nancy Pelosi did it ignores that strategic reality.

This leads to Charles Krauthammer's question - or here - (for which he provides no answer)

Was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's determination to bring this to a vote, knowing that it risked provoking Turkey into withdrawing crucial assistance to American soldiers in Iraq, a conscious (columnist Thomas Sowell) or unconscious (blogger Mickey Kaus) attempt to sabotage the U.S. war effort?

Krauthammer demolishes claims that passing the resolution is necessary for preventing genocide.

How does this work? Pelosi says: "Genocide still exists, and we saw it in Rwanda; we see it now in Darfur." Precisely. And what exactly is she doing about Darfur? Nothing. Pronouncing yourself on a genocide committed 90 years ago by an empire that no longer exists is Pelosi's demonstration of seriousness about existing, ongoing genocide?

Indeed, the Democratic Party she's leading in the House has been trying for months to force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq that could very well lead to genocidal civil war. This prospect has apparently not deterred her in the least.

Besides condemning something that happened 90 years ago can't stop it from happening. It already did.

And Krauthammer points out the United States did not sit idly by at the time.

As U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Morgenthau tried desperately to intervene on behalf of the Armenians. It was his consular officials deep within Turkey who (together with missionaries) brought out news of the genocide. And it was Morgenthau who helped tell the world about it in his writings. Near East Relief, the U.S. charity strongly backed by President Woodrow Wilson and the Congress, raised and distributed an astonishing $117 million in food, clothing and other vital assistance that, wrote historian Howard Sachar, "quite literally kept an entire nation alive."

So much for the United States letting friends commit crimes against humanity.

In the end though Krauthammer can't ascribe any base motives to Speaker Pelosi.

Instead, I fall back on Krauthammer's razor (with apologies to Occam): In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

So she's not calculating; just obtuse. I feel a lot better.

nancy pelosi, turkey.