When is Genocide not Genocide?

The answer to that question is simple -- when it's not politically expedient to call genocide by its name. For almost a century the US Government -- indeed much of the world -- has found it convenient to keep mum on one of the first of many genocides in the 20th century. This silence has led to tacit permission for other genocides from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Darfur.

Although the extermination of over a million Armenians occurred during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the current Turkish government continues to ban all talk of genocide. When foreign nations use the term the threaten political retaliation. So, everyone backs down. Of course the issue that the Turks hold over the US now is the Iraq War. They threaten to pull support for the war effort, which makes the current President very willing to go along with the Turks. But yesterday's committee vote to send to the House as a body a resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide for what it is has sent the Turks into a tizzy. Here is a report of the vote and the response in the NY Times.

The timing may be inconvenient for President Bush, but why was it inconvenient for Bill Clinton? It would seem that no time is convenient -- so now is the time to name that which has been left unnamed -- the Armenian Genocide.