Mark Meirowitz - TurkishNY.com
It is hard to believe that the lame duck US House of Representatives may actually take the extraordinarily destructive step of bringing up for a floor vote, during the week before Christmas, HR 252, a non-binding resolution which brands the historical events in Armenia as genocide.
This ill-advised resolution was approved by a one-vote margin in March, 2010 by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and was never heard of again. Now it has re-emerged from the grave in the last waning minutes of the House of Representatives that just received a “shellacking” from the American people
Without a mandate, and as the nation approaches the holiday season and the New Year, and with the attention of the American people directed to the year-end, the House, in its last gasps of breath before disappearing, has apparently decided that it will take up a resolution that could, if passed, severely damage US relations with Turkey. It is the Secretary of State that conducts foreign affairs and it is not good judgment for the House to consider resolutions that will upset our ally Turkey, and interfere with the Administration’s conduct of US foreign policy, especially in a sensitive time when the US needs to rely on Turkey’s cooperation on many fronts, especially in connection with the Iranian issue.
The term “lame duck” appears to have origins in British history. According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a “lame duck” is a “stockjobber or dealer who will not, or can not, pay his losses so he has to ‘waddle out the alley like a lame duck’” and “the expression can be used to describe any person or thing that is disabled or ineffectual”.
We have been down this road again and again. This resolution does not belong in a political body like the US House of Representatives. It is not for the House to make determinations of what happened in world history. Turkey and Armenia agreed on Protocols which called for the establishment of a historical commission to look into this matter. The focus should be on having the Protocols implemented and the commission involved in the historical inquiry. This is the proper purview of historians, not politicians.
It was totally inappropriate for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to pass this resolution in the first place, and it was also not surprising that after passage by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the resolution disappeared.
It is outlandish for the full House, in a Houdini-like sleight of hand maneuver, to have this resolution magically reappear at the very end of the Congressional session, as the nation’s attention is focused elsewhere. This is not transparency and openness – this is definitely not the American way.
As the lame duck session fades into obscurity, one would hope that the members of the House will not tarnish their integrity by considering this resolution.
The resolution should be allowed to disappear along with the lame duck Congress, as Congress adjourns for the year-end, and the New Year ushers in a new Congress.
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