Pelosi/Lantos & Treason

One wonders if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is so partisan that she will stop at nothing to damage this administration, especially with respect to the current war on terror directly, with particular emphasis on the increased danger to troops indirectly. Or…one wonders if she is just plain dumb as a gourd and in her naivete manages to gum up the works. The latest blunder, committed in tandem with partner-in-crime Congressman Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is the insistence that the Congress vote out a non-binding resolution stating that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians some 100 or so years ago.

There was such a massacre during 1915-23, actually in the beginning by the rulers of the Ottoman Empire (actually Turks) against Armenians, the former completely Muslim and the latter made up of Christians. It was despicable and was renounced at the time by the United States. The action included outright murder and displacement, sort of the equivalent of the Bataan Death March of 1942 but on a much larger scale. About a million and a half Armenians died. President Andrew Jackson’s displacement of the Cherokee Indians from North Carolina and Tennessee to Oklahoma in the 1830s was such a march, except that deaths occurred from hardships, not murder.

The United States had nothing to do with the Armenian genocide and later joined the Allies in World War I in defeating Germany and its allies, among whom was Turkey. Today, Turkey is a member of NATO and this country’s only actual ally among Muslim nations, allowing transit of U.S. supplies into Iraq through Turkey, a vital requirement for winning that war. Before Saddam’s fall, Turkey allowed the U.S. to use airbases on its soil to enforce the no-fly zone. The last thing needed now is for Pelosi and her crowd to – for no reason at all – insult the current Turks, who actually had nothing substantial to do with that genocide, either. This is the same sort of weird drumbeat used by panderers to the Al Sharpton crowd in blaming current whites for slavery, something too off the wall to even invite discussion.

In the recent General Petraeus hearing, Lantos said this at the end of his opening speech: “We need to get out of Iraq, for that country’s sake and for our own. It is time to go – and to go now.” Therein may lie the reason for his and Pelosi’s insistence on insulting Turkey, which has already ordered its ambassador to the U.S. to leave. Things are looking better in Iraq, thus making the democrats look bad in their constant whining about a hoped-for defeat, so what better way to turn that situation around than to interdict the major supply route into Iraq? One wonders what Lantos would think if the U.S. and Russians hadn’t insisted on defeating Germany in World War II, thus leaving him to languish in a concentration camp.

Far-fetched? Not at all! The tragedy is that this silly action can prolong the fighting, deprive troops of what they need, and thus place them in greater danger than would otherwise be the case. This amounts to treason. Turkey can shut down its end of the bargain any time it desires. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense said, according to the PBS Online News Hour of 11 October, that seventy percent of all air cargo going into Iraq goes through Turkey and about a third of the fuel consumed goes through Turkey or comes from Turkey.

The definition of treason: “the betrayal of a trust: TREACHERY.” Pelosi and Lantos are not so dumb that they can’t see their betrayal of trust regarding Turkey, which is bound by treaty (NATO) to stand with the United States in guaranteeing the safety of Europe. By spitting in the eye of the Turks and demanding that the Congress pass a resolution stating the obvious, with neither the U.S. nor current Turkish leaders responsible for that tragedy, comprises two things, namely, pandering to their large constituency of Armenian-Americans (every group is hyphenated these days of super-diversity), and making a sneak attack vis-à-vis the administration with regard to losing the war on terror.

The Foreign Affairs committee has reported out this silly resolution for floor action. This comprises treachery in that it sabotages American efforts to get the fighting stopped as soon as possible, the absolute necessity in that effort being the part played by Turkey, which has now recalled its ambassador and could well shut off the highways and airways to the U.S. This means extending the war, ergo, the enhanced loss of American lives. This is, indeed, treachery and the House needs to understand that fact and stop Pelosi and Lantos from both their pandering and their subversion.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark