"Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian population to rebellion?' I asked Mr. Graves. (British consul, Erzurum.)

'Certainly not,' he replied. 'I do not believe that a single Armenian would have been killed.'"

Sydney Whitman, Turkish Memories (1914), p. 94. The above exchange took place during the mid-1890s (the period where Power dumbly points a finger at Abdul Hamid for intentional extermination), as was a similar account from 1895, entitled "The Armenian Troubles and Where The Responsibility Lies." The same principles apply to the "1915" period. Whomever begins the violence must accept the responsibility for the repercussions. The Turkish consul was entirely correct in concluding, "The Armenians have only themselves to blame." No less an authority than the Armenian Republic's first prime minister practically said as much, in 1923.

The Turks, who had attempted to conduct the massacres secretly, were unhappy about the attention they were getting. In November 1915 Talaat advised the authorities in Aleppo that Morgenthau knew far too much. "It is important that foreigners who are in those parts shall be persuaded that the expulsion of the Armenians is in truth only deportation," Talaat wrote. "It is important that, to save appearances, a show of gentle dealing shall be made for a time, and the usual measures be taken in suitable places." A month later, angry that foreigners had obtained photographs of corpses along the road, Talaat recommended that these corpses be "buried at once," or at least hidden from view.30

In the first part of this look at Samantha Power's Hell Problem, I wondered about a fishy quote Power had utilized. There was, after all, a practical industry of unscrupulous characters, from Morgenthau on down, who put words into Talat Pasha's mouth. Getting the source of that quote (a stupid article written by the genocide-obsessed Julia Pascal) is what made me finally dig up a copy of Power's "Pulitzer Prize winning" book. At the time, I wondered whether the suspicious quote was an Andonian forgery, perhaps?

Well, Samantha Power has done it. She truly has proven herself to be "an idiot."

Her source here is "30. George R. Montgomery...'Why Talaat Pasha's Assassin Was Acquitted,' Current History, July 1921, p. 554," the brunt of which may be accessed at bottom of TAT's "Soghoman Tehlirian's Trial" page. George R. Montgomery was the highly propagandistic director of the Armenian-America Society, not exactly what a genuine scholar would accept as a trustworthy source. Talat's orders to Aleppo were fabricated by Aram Andonian. Indeed, even the 1921 Berlin kangaroo court rejected the Andonian forgeries, but that did not stop the immoral George R. Montgomery from using them in his article for the equally immoral New York Times, which published the article without question.

Morgenthau's pal, Adolph Ochs, honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

On one hand, we can almost excuse both Montgomery and the New York Times (as Power reported earlier, the Times' publisher, Adolph Ochs, was a close chum of Henry Morgenthau), since they were products of viciously anti-Turkish times, but in our new and enlightened age of Samantha Power's "Human Rights," by what justification can Samantha Power perpetuate these awful lies? Is she really that stupid, being unaware of these discredited documents? Or is she being unethically clever, and using false documentation knowingly, as does Vahakn Dadrian? (For whom the validation of the Andonian documents serves as his greatest embarrassment, assuming Dadrian is capable of embarrassment.) Since Samantha Power is no scholar, we can't explain why she would stoop so low... given the validity of the racist sources she has used as a whole, it is possible she is that dim-witted. Suffice it to say, those who point to the Andonian work operate on the same level as the anti-Semite who points to the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, to demonstrate how "evil" the Jews are.

(To further illustrate the falseness of Talat's words that Samantha Power would ask you to accept as genuine, the reader may look at the diary of a resettled Armenian teen-ager, who was present in Aleppo. See if you can find evidence of Talat's "usual measures.")

Power next touches on the money Morgenthau and others were able to raise for the Armenian cause, and recruits the powerful voice of one of America's greatest presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, who "wondered how anyone could possibly advise neutrality 'between despairing and hunted people, people whose little children are murdered and their women raped, and the victorious and evil wrongdoers.'"

Roosevelt actually serves as an excellent example to offset Samantha Power's "moral" position, the theme of her book, that we must act fast in order to prevent genocides. The problem of jumping in without knowing the real facts can be a worse crime than not jumping in at all, akin to lynching a man on the spot, on the say-so of the town's mob. The Ottoman Turks did not commit a state-sponsored genocide. All the factual evidence points to the contrary, and all the "evidence" Power is supplying, as can readily be seen, derive from corrupt and conflicted sources. Okay, Roosevelt was a swashbuckling adventurer and "Rough Rider" in his day, a romantic image to be sure, but if his desire to "smash" (as he wrote that he would love to do with both Spain and Turkey; he had his chance to "bully" the former power that was similarly on last legs) was based on his own prejudices, then why should we heed the opinion of Theodore Roosevelt? (Roosevelt was an advocate of the "whites are superior" notion, prevalent during his time period.)

Morgenthau tried to work around America's determined neutrality. In September 1915 he offered to raise $1 million to transport to the United States the Armenians who had escaped the massacres. "Since May," Morgenthau said, "350,000 Armenians have been slaughtered or have died of starvation. There are 550,000 Armenians who could now be sent to America, and we need help to save them." Turkey accepted the proposal, and Morgenthau called upon each of the states in the western United States to raise funds to equip a ship to transport and care for Armenian refugees. He appealed to American self-interest, arguing, "The Armenians are a moral, hard working race, and would make good citizens to settle the less thickly populated parts of the Western States."36 He knew he had to preemptively rebut those who expected Armenian freeloaders. But the Turks, insincere even about helping Armenians leave, blocked the exit of refugees. Morgenthau's plan went nowhere.37

This one is really a dilly. Once again, Samantha Power demonstrates herself to be an "idiot."

The Oct. 3, 1915 Dallas News report

Here is where the reader can tune in, to get a better idea of Morgenthau's million dollar plan. The episode actually serves to demonstrate there could have been no genocide.

At right is a clipping from the Dallas News (thanks to reader Cihan) from Oct. 3, 1915. "TURKS LET ARMENIANS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA — Privilege Granted to Those Who will Become Naturalized Citizens." (A grand policy continued in the USA, even when it comes to convicted Armenian terrorists.)

Washington, Oct. 2 — Turkey has consented to the emigration of all Armenians who actually will become naturalized American citizens on their arrival in this country. Ambassador Morgenthau has arranged with the Turkish government for the free departure of all Armenians for whose intention to become naturalized Americans he can vouch. It is understood Turkey will permit the Armenians to come to the United States, although it will not allow them to take up residence in Europe for fear they will join Turkey's enemies."

(As if coming to America, ballooning the Armenian population to a huge one million or so in less than a century, would have prevented the Armenians from becoming "Turkey's enemies.")

Here is an example among so many others demonstrating the good heart of the Turks. Did this plan move ahead? If not, there could have been reasons... perhaps the required money was not raised. (In the article linked above, we learn Morgenthau really needed $5 million.) (ADDENDUM: Or perhaps the U.S. government, heeding immigration law, balked at admitting such a large number of "professional beggars" — to borrow the phrase of Col. William Haskell — as in an earlier period.) Whatever happened, however, Samantha Power cruelly informs us, "But the Turks, insincere even about helping Armenians leave, blocked the exit of refugees. Morgenthau's plan went nowhere." Even when the Turks do good, Power must show they are bad.

But here's the clincher: Power's source, footnote 37, "Turkey Bars Red Cross," New York Times, October 19,1915, p. 4."

The reader may access this article online at a popular Armenian propaganda site. We can see the topic has nothing to do with Morgenthau's $1 million plan. The article, as the headline sums up, is all about how the Red Cross would not be permitted to travel into the Ottoman Empire, in order to help the Armenians. There is nothing about Armenian immigration to the USA. There is one reference to Morgenthau by article's end: "We find it also difficult at present, almost impossible, in fact, to send supplies to Turkey, everything is in such a fearful condition in Europe. We have notified those that desire to send contributions for Armenian relief that we would transmit them through the American Ambassador at Constantinople, as this seems to be the only method at present of aiding the Armenian population."

The above was written by "Miss Mabel Boardman of the executive staff of the American Red Cross." It was a private letter written to "Dr. M. Simbad Gabriel ... the President of the Armenian General Progressive Association." The latter (an Armenian, as covered above) simply made these private communications available to the New York Times reporter, once again demonstrating how all of these anti-Turkish forces were working together. In the article's conclusion, Dr. Gabriel somehow tied in Miss Boardman's "We can't go" message with proof "in the eyes of all prejudiced persons" (!) of "convincing evidence of the truthfulness of the terrible stories that are coming out of Turkey regarding the persecution, murder, and torturing of the Armenian people." Quite a leap!

Bimbo Scholar: Samantha Power.

Can you imagine that Samantha Power pointed not only to a bare-faced piece of propaganda, but one that had nothing to do with her topic... offered as proof that "insincere" Turks "blocked the exit of refugees"? Does our little "Human Rights" champion have any scruples?

In point of fact, let's take a look at the time the Turks performed the reverse of what this "Red Cross" article told us:

When the USA declared war on Germany, the USA became the nominal enemy of the Ottoman Empire as well. Years beforehand, the missionaries and the more recently arrived members of the Near East Relief could not have been more vicious toward the Turks. In spite of these realities, Talat Pasha promised Ambassador Elkus that he would let these Turk-hostile Christians stay and take care of the Armenians. Perhaps this was the only time in history that a combatant country had given permission to the citizens of another country fighting against its side to stay, feed, clothe, treat, educate and give moral support to the people which it was accused of exterminating. Turkish people, at this time, were starving to death (thousands dying daily from famine, as Morgenthau told us in his "Story" book), but Talat Pasha didn't even lay the condition that the Turks needed to be taken care of, as well. This Turkish leader, whom Samantha Power is blackening the reputation of as another Hitler, demonstrated in this instance that he was an amazing humanitarian. (See Story of Near East Relief: 1915-1930, James L. Barton, 1930).

Not all Red Cross personnel were adherents of propaganda, by the way:

America should feed the half million Turks whose hinterland was willfully demolished by the retreating Greeks, instead of aiding the Greeks and Armenians who are sitting around waiting for America to give them their next meal. The stories of Turk atrocities circulated among American churches are a mess of lies. I believe that the Greeks and not the Turks are barbarians.”

Colonel William Haskell, the American Red Cross; returning from a tour of investigation in the Near East. Source: The Turkish Myth, 1923. Here is what the colonel thought of the Armenians, according to Dr. Richard Hovannisian.

 In early 1919 the British, who still occupied Turkey with some 320,000 soldiers, pressured the cooperative sultan to arrest a number of Turkish executioners. Of the eight Ottoman leaders who led Turkey to war against the Allies, five were apprehended. In April 1919 the Turks set up a tribunal in Constantinople that convicted two senior district officials for deporting Armenians and acting "against humanity and civilization."

It is not ethical to call anyone an "executioner" unless the charge has been proven, particularly if the accuser has studied law in an Ivy League university.

This is Samantha's cue to get into the 1919-20 puppet Ottoman kangaroo courts, the findings of which even the British rejected as a travesty of justice. Imagine an occupying power holding a gun to the head of the vanquished, and ordering the vanquished to... let's allow Vahakn Dadrian to tell you what the Allies demanded: "Unless you prosecute and punish the authors of Armenian deportations and massacres, the conditions of the impending peace will be very severe and harsh."

Conscious of his place in history, Talaat had begun writing his memoirs. In them he downplayed the scale of the violence and argued that any abuses (referred to mainly in the passive voice) were fairly typical if "regrettable" features of war, carried out by "uncontrolled elements."

In other words, Power is implying Talat was guilty and the only reason he made sure to write his memoirs was to, in a manner of speaking, "cover his ass." Forget about how natural it is for figures who have played an important historical role to want to make a record of what transpired. Even insignificant megalomaniacs as Henry Morgenthau have been known to write memoirs. Here is a taste of those Talat memoirs. Frankly, his words come across as refreshingly honest. Power provides some of them:

"I confess," he wrote, "that the deportation was not carried out lawfully everywhere. . . . Some of the officials abused their authority, and in many places people took the preventive measures into their own hands and innocent people were molested." Acknowledging it was the government's duty to prevent and punish "these abuses and atrocities," he explained that doing so would have aroused great popular "discontent," and Turkey could not afford to be divided during war. "We did all we could," he claimed, "but we preferred to postpone the solution of our internal difficulties until after the defeat of our external enemies." Although other countries at war also enacted harsh "preventive measures," he wrote, "the regrettable results were passed over in silence," whereas "the echo of our acts was heard the world over, because everybody's eyes were upon us." Even as Talaat attempted to burnish his image, he could not help but blame the Armenians for their own fate. "I admit that we deported many Armenians from our eastern provinces," he wrote, but "the responsibility for these acts falls first of all upon the deported people themselves."47

There is nothing written in the above that does not conform 100% with historical accuracy or common logic. Take for example, his statement that it is the government's duty to prevent and punish abuses and atrocities. That's absolutely true, and one strong piece of evidence that there could have been no genocide is that the Ottoman authorities did punish those committing crimes against Armenians, over 1,600 such cases, some punished by execution. (A writer for a not-friendly German newspaper was impressed during a "genocide conference" that was avoided by Samantha Power's hypocritical genocide club, although renegade club member Hilmar Kaiser participated.) Naturally, however, during wartime especially, no matter how honorable a government is to "go by the book," there will always be other factors to consider. For example, only one American soldier was tried for the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, and his (Lt. Calley's) punishment, before a period of house arrest, was only three days' imprisonment. As a more recent example, when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq erupted, only a few scapegoat soldiers were made examples of. Why? Because if the USA had gone all out to prosecute all of its soldiers responsible for "abuses and atrocities," that would be very bad for morale at home. There is still a war that is being fought. (And the war that the Ottomans were fighting was not the kind that Americans are used to, safely away from the homeland. WWI was a war that would determine either life or death for the empire. It finally brought death.)

Role Model for the Genocide Scholar:
RAPHAEL LEMKIN

 
It was my intention to cover the rest of the book in more detail, but since I got into exposing Power's lack of scholarship in the chapter regarding the "Armenian Genocide," Samantha Power has tired me to the point of my needing to take a powder. Let's touch on a few highlights.

Given Power's abysmal scholarly methodology, one would have rocks in the head to accept whatever else she has to say at face value. You can simply call me Rockhead now, as I'm going to accept her factoids on Raphael Lemkin. This is the first time I'm learning about Lemkin in detail (Peter Balakian offered a Lemkin statement that frankly, made Lemkin out to be a fool. See Footnote 23 on this page) and I'm not that interested in conducting genuine research concerning the man's life. However, you can be assured Lemkin is like a God in the genocide world, and Power was not going to say anything "bad" about Lemkin. If anything, we are dealing with a whitewashed look, the polar opposite of how Samantha Power has chosen to portray Turks, as the embodiments of evil.

Lemkin is a "twenty-one-year-old Polish Jew studying linguistics at the University of Lvov" (in descriptions of Lemkin, we must always be told that he was a "Polish Jew"), and he engaged a professor in the topic of the "Armenian Genocide."

Lemkin asked why the Armenians did not have Talaat arrested for the massacre. The professor said there was no law under which he could be arrested. "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens," he said. "He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing." "It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men?" Lemkin asked. "This is most inconsistent."'

Irony of ironies! While Lemkin had an excellent point in the case of a despot who deliberately murdered multitudes, the fact is, Talat can only be judged as having killed "more than a million" if that annoying little matter as "evidence" can be shown. We don't point to Andonian forgeries as "evidence," as Silly Samantha Power has done. In this regard, we learn that Raphael Lemkin was no different than Samantha Power.

(Lemkin had more of an excuse. He was living in a "Christian" country that mainly provided Armenian propaganda as real history. The biased "Christian" West never bothered to hear the side of the Turks. If one hears only one side, it's very easy to come up with genocides. The situation is little different today, alas, as anti-Turkish prejudice rages on, but in our modern times, Samantha Power had easy access to much more information while Lemkin's chances for perusal were limited. On an ethical level, then, although Lemkin will be getting the criticism he well deserves — for allowing his prejudices to take precedence — we can't compare his lack of ethics with those of our "Human Rights" champion, Samantha Power.)

(And by the way; sadly, history has demonstrated that it was no crime at all for "Tehlirian to kill a man." His example would be demonstrated time and time again, in most trials of the rare Armenian terrorists who would get caught in future years. The degree of anti-Turkish prejudice in the West is simply staggering.)

Lemkin was torn about how to judge Tehlirian's act. On the one hand, Lemkin credited the Armenian with upholding the "moral order of mankind" and drawing the world's attention to the Turkish slaughter. Tehlirian's case had quickly turned into an informal trial of the deceased Talaat for his crimes against the Armenians; the witnesses and written evidence introduced in Tehlirian's defense brought the Ottoman horrors to their fullest light to date. The New York Times wrote that the documents introduced in the trial "established once and for all the fact that the purpose of the Turkish authorities was not deportation but annihilation."3 But Lemkin was uncomfortable that Tehlirian, who had been acquitted on the grounds of what today would be called "temporary insanity," had acted as the "self-appointed legal officer for the conscience of mankind."4 Passion, he knew, would often make a travesty of justice. Impunity for mass murderers like Talaat had to end; retribution had to be legalized.

Footnote 3. George R. Montgomery, "Why Talaat's Assassin Was Acquitted," Current History, July 1921, pp. 551-555. Tehlirian lived out his days in California.

Footnote 4. Several years later, in 1926, Lemkin learned that Scholom Schwarzbart, a Jewish tailor orphaned in a pogrom in Ukraine in 1918, shot the Ukrainian minister of war Semion Petliure in Paris. As in the Tehlirian case, the jury found it difficult to acquit or condemn the bereaved assassin. They declared him "insane" and then freed him. After the Schwarzbart trial, Lemkin wrote an article describing the man's act as a "beautiful crime" and deploring the absence of a law banning the destruction of national, racial, and religious groups.

Power has finally provided truth, with her statement: Tehlirian's case had quickly turned into an informal trial of the deceased Talaat for his crimes. The cursory two-day mockery of a trial offered (with the exception of Talat's wife) only witnesses for the defense. Intense partisans having nothing to do with the murder trial, such as Johannes Lepsius and Bishop Balakian, were asked to the witness stand. As for Power's critical declaration, "The New York Times wrote that the documents introduced in the trial 'established once and for all the fact that the purpose of the Turkish authorities was not deportation but annihilation,'" note the "George Montgomery" source. These documents were not only not introduced in the trial, but they were the Andonian forgeries. Shame, shame on Samantha Power, for perpetuating these lies.

And isn't Footnote 4 revealing, as far as Lemkin's character, calling the murder of a man "beautiful." I don't know how guilty this Semion Petliure was, but even if he was responsible for the murder of every Jew who died in that pogrom, it's not comforting for Lemkin to have condoned murder. And it does not say much about his respect for law to have only been "uncomfortable" about vigilantism substituting for legal convictions; he should have been outraged that murderers were allowed to get off scot-free, regardless of the alleged criminality of their victims. It was Lemkin's great prejudice and ignorance regarding the Armenian matter (and at least prejudice regarding the Jewish one) that likely allowed him to be very pleased with these acquittals. We expect honorable professionals to rise above their human emotions, but he evidently entertained a kind of hero-worship Power displayed toward Soghoman Tehlirian. (See "Part I," link page top.) Incidentally, Power's words in Footnote 4 do not ring true. The juries in both cases did not find it "difficult to acquit or condemn." They wholeheartedly chose to acquit, and used "temporary insanity" as a loophole.

Lemkin had prepared a law that would prohibit the destruction of nations, races, and religious groups. The law hinged on what he called "universal repression," a precursor to what today is called "universal jurisdiction": The instigators and perpetrators of these acts should be punished wherever they were caught, regardless of where the crime was committed, or the criminals' nationality or official status.6 The attempt to wipe out national, ethnic, or religious groups like the Armenians would become an international crime that could be punished anywhere, like slavery and piracy. The threat of punishment, Lemkin argued, would yield a change in practice.

Did you know that slavery and piracy could be punished anywhere? Maybe piracy, but slavery? Looks like the USA and many other nations have much to answer for. (Since "Nullum Crimen" is not a concept acceptable to genocide and human rights moralists, at least in selective cases.)

What's above has good intentions on the surface, but like the good intentions of communism as Karl Marx had originally envisioned, plays a different hand in the world of reality. (1) "The threat of punishment" has served as no deterrent in genocidal examples since 1948. If a murderer is set on murdering, no law or morals will detract such a criminal. (2) Genocide is a political tool for those who are in power. For example, there was no "attempt to wipe out national, ethnic, or religious groups like the Armenians." Only partisans with axes to grind have made such conclusions for political gain. What a great excuse for those who don't like the accused: "You committed a genocide," they declare without paying attention to proof, and then genocide becomes a tool, in the hands of what may justly be termed forces of evil. (Daunting as well are those making the accusations having no less blood on their hands. For example, the Armenians are far guiltier, as far as extermination campaigns conducted over the years. When such villains have the sympathy of sanctimonious "do-gooders" as Samantha Power, those such as Power are not going to dare criticize them. Even "good guy" nations such as the United States — the nation Power is impugning for not moving fast enough against genocide — is not innocent of war crimes, some to the extent of Power's definition of "genocide.")

Although Lemkin was Jewish, many of his neighbors were Christian. He was aghast that Nero could feed Christians to the lions and [learned from his mother]... that once the state became determined to wipe out an ethnic or religious group, the police and the citizenry became the accomplices and not the guardians of human life. As a boy, Lemkin often grilled his mother for details on historical cases of mass slaughter, learning about the sacking of Carthage, the Mongol invasions, and the targeting of the French Huguenots.

Would the Mongols' crimes fall into the category of "genocide"? Or would slaughters committed during invasions be considered a "war crime"? In addition, was Nero such a zero? For example, we've all heard Nero was maniacally playing his fiddle while Rome burned. New evidence indicates Nero was actually pitching in with his fire department to put out the blazes. And the Christians were likely responsible for starting the fire. (Because Christians were writing this history, Nero was perhaps made to look like a murderous madman.) Roman methods of execution such as feeding people to lions or crucifixions were ghastly, but in fairness, we must evaluate these methods with the context of the times. There are always two sides to a story, and it does not say much for Lemkin to have made blanket condemnations based on surface explanations.

The subject of slaughter had an unfortunate personal relevance for him growing up in the Bialystok region of Poland: In 1906 some seventy Jews were murdered and ninety gravely injured in local pogroms. Lemkin had heard that mobs opened the stomachs of their victims and stuffed them with feathers from pillows and comforters in grotesque mutilation rituals. He feared that the myth that Jews liked to grind young Christian boys into matzoh would lead to more killings. Lemkin saw what he later described as "a line of blood" leading from the massacre of the Christians in Rome to the massacre of Jews nearby.7

All the more reason why Lemkin should have been deeply ashamed for simple-mindedly having accused the Turks. Christian anti-Semitism through the ages is a matter of record. The Jews escaped to the tolerant Ottoman Empire as a haven. The Ottoman Empire and Turkey have probably been the greatest historical defenders of Judaism, before the USA took over that role, for less pure-hearted reasons.

He went to work as a local prosecutor and in 1929 began moonlighting on drafting an international law that would commit his government and others to stopping the targeted destruction of ethnic, national, and religious groups. It was this law that the cocksure Lemkin presented to his European legal colleagues in Madrid in 1933. Lemkin felt that both the physical and the cultural existence of groups had to be preserved.

We are getting the picture that "genocide" was becoming an obsession for Raphael Lemkin. Very commendable on the surface — who after all, would argue against it — but how was he to predict that unscrupulous forces would misuse the purity behind the idea, for their own evil ends.

...In August 1939, Hitler met with his military chiefs and delivered a notorious tutorial on a central lesson of the recent past: Victors write the history books. He declared: It was knowingly and lightheartedly that Genghis Khan sent thousands of women and children to their deaths. History sees in him only the founder of a state. . . . The aim of war is not to reach definite lines but to annihilate the enemy physically. It is by this means that we shall obtain the vital living space that we need. Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?'16 A week later, on September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. In 1942 Hitler restored Talaat's ashes to Turkey....

Did "Hitler the Historian" really make that comment about Genghis Khan? (Genghis Khan, of course, never gets a break in Western history, perceived one-dimensionally as a ruthless killer of multitudes and no one cares about whatever functions he served as a "founder of a state." Everything Genghis Khan did was "bad." Kind of like Turkey.) We don't really know what Hitler said in that speech, since only a few people took notes by hand. But we can be almost certain the "Armenians" part was added later for political purposes, and we should not be surprised our anti-scholar should present that statement as though it were a fact. (And what kind of a goofy connection is that, the "Hitler Armenian Quote," followed by sending Talat's remains to Turkey? Is that Power's way of telling us modern Turks are so much like the Nazis, as she blabbered on PBS's "Armenian Genocide" show?)

Lemkin arrives in the USA after suffering hardship as a refugee; "Thanks to a professor at Duke University with whom he had once translated the Polish criminal code into English, Lemkin secured an appointment to the Duke faculty to teach international law... he landed [in the USA] on April 18,1941." Connections are important, like Samantha Power, Peter Balakian, Gail Winston, HarperCollins...

Lemkin next tried to approach President Roosevelt directly. An aide urged him to summarize his proposal in a one-page memo. Lemkin was aghast that he had to "compress the pain of millions, the fear of nations, the hopes for salvation from death" in one page. But he managed, suggesting that the United States adopt a treaty banning barbarity and urging that the Allies declare the protection of Europe's minorities a central war aim. Several weeks later a courier relayed a message from the president. Roosevelt said he recognized the danger to groups but saw difficulties adopting such a law at the present. He assured Lemkin that the United States would issue a warning to the Nazis and urged patience. Lemkin was livid. "'Patience' is a good word to be used when one expects an appointment, a budgetary allocation or the building of a road," he noted. "But when the rope is already around the neck of the victim and strangulation is imminent, isn't the word 'patience' an insult to reason and nature?"29

On one hand, all too true. I remember feeling the same sentiments during the events in Bosnia. On the other hand, what was he expecting? For the USA to be the world's policeman whenever something goes wrong? There are many considerations involved with the priorities of a nation... it isn't easy to commit to costly and dangerous wars, at the drop of a hat. How many of us individually rush to the needs of desperate others? In future years, had Lemkin lived long enough, would Lemkin have stopped and saved every homeless person he would have seen on the streets of New York City, lying in the cold, and in danger of freezing? This line of thinking is idealistic, which is great, but it's simply not realistic.

He believed a "double murder" was being committed—one by the Nazis against the Jews and the second by the Allies, who knew about Hitler's extermination campaign but refused to publicize or denounce it.

Rabbi Stephen Wise

We don't need to get into the politics of what was involved at the time... there were Jewish groups that also turned a blind eye to Holocaust happenings. (One who was a hero, according to Power, was Rabbi Stephen Wise, who stated publicly that two million Jews had been murdered. This was in Nov. 1942, when the USA was already at war, and the USA was already underway in efforts to do the Nazis in. Wise was Morgenthau's Zionist chum who championed the Armenians, in order to hasten the Ottomans' death, paving a quicker path to a Jewish homeland in Palestine.) Let's not forget the Holocaust was not steeped in fact while occurring, and the reports were construed as rumors. Thinking with the benefit of hindsight is not a privilege for those experiencing events in real time. (Power elaborates on the "plentiful" intelligence [p. 34], and of course there were powerful clues. Disbelief and anti-Semitism were reasons for ignoring the evil deeds, as Power correctly writes further. However, Power's motif is in admonishing governments and common people for not acting sooner, as genocides are developing or are already in the works. In order to act, the reliable facts need to be in. "Intelligence" is not always reliable, as we were painfully reminded not long ago when we were asked to believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.)

Moreover, is the above where Peter Balakian latched onto the notion of "double killing"? (Just wondering; never mind.)

During the Turkish campaign against the Armenians this same propensity for incredulity was evident, but it was even more pronounced in the 1940s because of a backlash against the hyped-up "Belgian atrocities" of World War I. During that war, journalists had faithfully relayed tales of bloodthirsty "Huns" mutilating and raping nuns and dismembering Belgian babies. Indeed, they reported claims that the Germans had erected a "corpse-conversion factory where they bioiled human fat and bones into lubricants and glycerine. In the 1920s and 1930s, the press had debunked many of the Allies' wartime reports of German savagery, yielding a "hangover of skepticism." Although many of these stories were confirmed years later, they were still being discredited at the outbreak of World War II.

The above works on so many levels of irony. Note how Power slyly weaves in the "Armenian Genocide," as she will constantly do throughout the book, giving the idea that the Armenian matter was not just any genocide, but perhaps the mold genocides were made from, even in the case of the Holocaust. But if there is any "incredulity" with her opening statement, it concerns the statement itself. Is she out of her mind? The Western world simply ate up sensational stories from the Orient. Readers were weaned on tales of barbaric Turks slicing open innocent Christians, and readily accepted the preposterous claims. Such is the reason why propagandists as Power feel free to repeat these ugly lies this very day, as anti-Turkish prejudice is still very much alive and well.

As Cyrus Hamlin so correctly opined on anti-Turkish propaganda in the late 19th century, "(This) one-sided and unreliable information (about any people) after a long period of unchallenged time, would create hostility and hatred that would not be easily overcome.” Truly, how awfully disingenuous of Samantha Power to give the idea that most Westerners did not swallow the tall Armenian tales!

Then she pulls a fast one, letting us know that World War I propaganda against the Germans did actually fall within the realm of her selective knowledge base. While reading these sentences, my mind immediately travelled to, "You idiot! If you are aware that journalists made up such horror stories about the Germans, why are you accepting 'New York Times' reports on the Armenians as the gospel truth?" As if on cue, Samantha Power then sort of replied to my question by giving the impression that all of those anti-WWI German tales were true, after all..!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she points to a 2001 book called German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial, by Horne and Kramer, to confirm that the WWI German horror stories "were confirmed years later." Maybe this is an excellent book and the authors have stumbled onto ground-breaking new evidence (although my alarm bells are already up from the choice of the "Denial" word in the title), but I would not be surprised if this was not a "politically selective" book, much like Power's own "A Problem From Hell." It would serve Power's purpose to affirm the German horror stories, because she must be aware of how vulnerable her claims are regarding the "Armenian Genocide." Simply to affirm her beloved Armenian Genocide, one cannot put it past Power to stamp her approval on any and every claim showing the WWI German horror tales to be true.

 
Melchior Palyi reviewed a 1944 book Lemkin had written entitled Axis Rule over Occupied Europe, and produced a line that resonates with truth: "...The Nazis shamelessly displayed their intentionally planned misdeeds, while the western Allies stumble into illegal practices and cover them with humanitarian or other formula." Brr! What a cutting analogy with the sanctimonious "genocide scholar" who sometimes produces greater evil than the presumed evil-doer on the genocide scholar's holy crusade. (We'll be touching on this powerful point, as we wind up this page.) Palyi went on to write that Lemkin had written a "prosecutor's brief" rather than an "impartial" inquiry. Once again, an on-the-nose observation about the genocide scholar! (Lemkin appears to have made the mold with his dogma.) Power doesn't seem to care for Palyi much, dismissing his words as "false equivalency" (p. 39).

Lemkin was somewhat conflicted about the roots of responsibility and the relative role of individual and collective guilt, theories of accountability that continue to compete today. On the one hand, Lemkin urged the punishment of those individuals responsible for Nazi horrors. On the other, he espoused an early version of the theory, put forth again recently by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners, that ascribed guilt not only to the perpetrators of the crimes but to their fellow citizens who failed to stop them and often appeared actively supportive.

I've got the feeling Power is a fan of the latter "theory of accountability." Maybe this is why she appears to hate Turks; she is so strongly a believer of the "Armenian Genocide," to the extent of presenting one false fact after another in a pathetic pursuit of affirmation, she feels that all Turks must be cut from the same Nazi cloth. (As she strongly alluded in the PBS show.) Looks like her hero Lemkin could have been her role model on this count; another reviewer of Lemkin's book (p. 40) "faulted Lemkin's sweeping ascription of blame." By finding "innate viciousness" in the German people, Lemkin was feeding "nazism-in-reverse." This is what we would call the genocide scholar's tendency for racism, folks.

On p. 44, Power allows readers to conclude that 1,765,000 Jews (as believed in Dec. 1944) were gassed and cremated in Auschwitz between April 1942 and April 1944. Yet a former director of Washington’s Holocaust Museum (in response to former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess' signed assertion for killing some 2.5 million), Jeshajahu Weinberg, is on record for explaining: “Today historians believe that the total number of inmates who perished in Auschwitz was a million and a half, or even less." (The Holocaust Museum in Washington, 2002, p. 153.) So why is genocide scholar Samantha Power not bothering to correct the higher number, at least with a footnote? In her book, she also refers to the total Jewish mortality as six million, when the Holocaust Museum has settled for a median of 5.25 million. Shouldn't professional "genocide scholars" be aware of these revised figures? Or can it be that they really don't care about the facts? (Perhaps they are afraid of being called "revisionists.")

In 1946, Lemkin showed up in Nuremberg as a (as Power puts in parentheses) "lobbyist" to get "genocide" spotlighted. Roaming in the corridors, a lawyer described Lemkin as "a man in pain." Learning of the death of his parents, he went into "overdrive," bugging the personnel. One lawyer remembers Lemkin as a "disheveled, disoriented refugee less concerned with hanging the Nazi war criminals than with getting genocide included in the tribunal's list of punishable crimes." Power continues: "Most of the prosecutors tried to avoid him, seeing him as a nag or, in Yiddish, a nudnik."

Setting the "holier-than-thou" agenda-driven genocide scholar prototype beautifully. No wonder genocide scholars worship this man.

He then decided to infiltrate the U.N. in late 1946 (emphasis Holdwater's): "Security guards were willing to look the other way when the unaccredited, somewhat fanatical lawyer would turn any empty UN office into his home for the day — 'like a hermit crab.'" Two New York Times reporters "recall the horror of many a correspondent and diplomat when the wild-eyed professor with steel-rimmed glasses and a relentless appetite for rejection began sprinting after them in the corridors saying, 'You and I, we must change the world.'"

"He was always there like a shadow, a presence, floating through the halls and constantly pulling scraps of paper out of his pockets. He was not loved because he was known as a time consumer. If he managed to nab you, you were trapped. Correspondents on deadline used to run from him like mad. But he would run after them, tie flopping in the air, genocide story at the ready."

"Most of the correspondents who bothered to notice Lemkin wondered how he made ends meet... In his rush to persuade delegates to support him, he frequently fainted from hunger. Completely alone in the world and perennially sleepless, he often wandered the streets at night." (p. 52)

I suppose passages of the above were presented to show how charming Lemkin was on one hand, and his dogged persistence was rightly highlighted, as persistence brings results. And so, Lemkin finally succeeded in getting the United Nations to adopt the genocide convention as law. However, the above also displays the role model for genocide scholars to follow, and it's all there: the dogma, the single-mindedness, the sanctimony... it's actually pretty scary.

Power's Choice of Genocides

 
As Humphrey Bogart kind of said in CASABLANCA, "Of all the gin-ocides in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." Let's see what grabbed Samantha Power's attention:

1) The "Armenian Genocide"

2) Cambodia

3) Iraqi Kurds

4) Bosnia

5) Rwanda

6) Srebrenica

7) Kosovo

It may be argued that the last two are subsets of "Bosnia," definitely in the case of "Srebrenica," as the perpetrator was the same. So, really, Power looked into four genocides that followed her favorite one that began the book.

Of these four: Rwanda. A genocide, without question.

 (ADDENDUM, 9-08: Or... was it? That is, did Rwanda fulfill the U.N. Convention's requirements, in particular the exclusion of political groups? It is easy to make genocide conclusions when we've been exclusively fed one politically-motivated version of events, and we don't bother to investigate in cases we are not emotionally involved. Read "Genocide Inflation is the Real Human Rights Threat.")

Is Cambodia really a genocide? Not in the sense that the Khmer Rouge behaved so horrifyingly; it was definitely a "genocide" in the pure and non-technical sense of the word. But other than the bothersome "political" catch (ones who were killed basically couldn't conform well to the mindless new order; Power explained above that the exclusion of political groups made this example difficult to define, but I'm not quite sure how this exclusion was dealt with), what we had was Cambodian vs. Cambodian. Article 2 of the Convention specifies that the victims need to belong to either a national, ethnical, racial or religious group that is presumably different than the corresponding identity of the perpetrator. In that sense, what we have cannot technically be called a "genocide." An Israeli quoted in Power's chapter describes Cambodia as "auto-genocide," and that is precisely what Cambodia boils down to. But in the end, how does the Cambodian example conform to the UN Convention?

If it does not conform, what is Cambodia doing in Power's list? The idea here is not that Cambodia wasn't a genocide... it most certainly was one of the worst cases of systematic and government-directed slaughter in the 20th century. The idea is to emphasize that people can make a "genocide" out of anything, even in the rare clear-cut case that does not abide by the technical definition. Imagine how cases that are far foggier could also be manipulated.

This is the worst thing about "genocide." If someone wants to make a genocide out of a conflict for political gain, it is not so difficult to do. By doing so, one commits a greater wrong, in a sense, by saddling the accused with the charge of a ruinous crime. Given how irrational and dogmatic and faith-based and uncaring-of-historical- facts that "genocide scholars" are, woe to the accused who "denies" the charge. The genocide scholar is holier than the rest of us, and if members of their club decree an event as a "genocide," their conclusion must be accepted as law.

Bosnia

I have a little bias against the Serbs. Some of them can be pretty kooky, living in 1389, still battling in Kosovo (where the Serbs came under the domination of the Ottomans. Not long before, it was the Serbian Empire that had taken over Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania. You can bet fair Ottoman rule saved these people from the heavy hand of the Serbs, although the Turks will never get the credit for it). The extremists among them share too many characteristics of Orthodox cousins like Greeks and Armenians, considering the hatred of Turks to be patriotic, and making any statement that is expedient, the truth be damned. The prevarications of the Serbian leadership during the break-up of Yugoslavia was a phenomenon most became familiar with. The worst shared characteristic lies with how merciless and murderous they can all be, in ethnic cleansing mode. Turcophobes who have seen these Orthodox brothers in "genocidal" action often forget their bigoted feelings toward Turks and marvel at how much worse these "Christians" could be.

And there is little question that if the Bosnian Serbs and Serbs of Serbia had the opportunity, they would have exterminated every last one of the Bosnian Muslims, and probably the Croats, in a case of "religious" and not "ethnic" cleansing. These people were Slavic, after all, even though Serbs and Croats would prefer to highlight their differences. (And the crazies among the Serbs referred to the Muslims as "Turks.")

Yet I am able, for a good part, to keep a lid on my prejudices. While I generally consider what happened in Bosnia a "genocide" (Serb leaders such as Milosevic and Karadzic roused the rabble, no differently than Armenian committee members worked Ottoman-Armenian crowds, along "racial" lines. Those were heartbreaking times, as Bosnian Serbs who had surrounded Sarajevo were taking potshots at innocent civilians, and women were systematically raped, with the knowledge that culturally and religiously, for a woman to be "soiled" among Muslims would be devastating), and the Serbs appeared as the obvious villains, there were times I ran into disturbing accounts that made me wonder. Such as with the photographs of the skeletal "concentration camp" victims... there might have been tricks at work that made the picture not quite what the public was led to believe. (It's not that the bodies of these victims could have been faked, simply that there might have been false manipulation behind the scenes in order to get the West cracking. Which might not have been a bad thing, as anyone who remembers those times is aware the Muslims were up the creek. But a falsehood is a falsehood.)

Knowing what I know about the dirty politics of genocide, I am sometimes uncomfortable about referring to these events as a "genocide." (Even though the shorthand of "genocide" has been difficult to resist in this case; there are pages in the TAT site that are accepting of Bosnia as a genocide.) The main chapter in these sad tragic times that can be labeled a clear-cut genocide, as far as I'm concerned, is Srebrenica.

It's not that the Serbs' villainy is uncertain. Trials at the Hague have spotlighted their awful acts. Here is an example featured on TAT. (But the example is Srebrenica.)

What we're getting at here, is that the clean conclusion of "genocide" is a rarity. And we can't rely on emotional and unscrupulous "genocide scholars" to separate fact from fiction.

To conclude this chapter on Bosnia, and whether it really was a "genocide," let's point to a favorite source of Samantha Power published one day shy of the "Armenian Genocide" celebration. In an intelligently written article entitled "THE BOSNIA CALCULATION: How many have died? Not nearly as many as some would have you think" (George Kenney, The NY Times Magazine, April 23, 1995), we are told, "There can be no minimizing of what the Serbs have done in Bosnia. Their punishment of the Muslims far outweighs any Muslim transgression," which no one (save for some delirious Serbs) can argue with. We are also told, quite reasonably, that  "Bosnia isn't the Holocaust or Rwanda; it's Lebanon." The author disputes the commonly provided mortality figure of 200,000, and suggests "25,000 to 60,000 — total from all sides."

"What surprises me is not that the popular figure is so inflated...  but that it has been so widely and uncritically accepted." Well, that's "genocide politics," Mr. Kenney. And the fact that whomever controls the information has a monopoly on "genocide."

As far as why the figure of 200,000 provided by the  Bosnian Deputy Minister of Information was universally accepted, the author hits it on the nose by writing, "An inert press simply never bothered to learn the origins of the numbers it reported." That is because the Muslims were designated as the victims, and whatever the victim says in genocide politics must be automatically accepted. This serves as the perfect parallel as to why the press mindlessly and infuriatingly prints Armenian genocide claims at face value, such as "More than one million killed." 

 Toward the article's conclusion, Kenney wrote, "In 1995, lacking the bodies, the charge of Genocide has worn thin. It seems to have almost become sensationalism for its own sake. Apart from any question of the number of fatalities, journalists have begun a hot little debate about how 'objective' coverage of Bosnia has been, about whether it has tended to favor the Muslims."

I don't know about the charge of "genocide" wearing thin, not if we listen to crusaders like Samantha Power. But the rest of that paragraph rings so true, regarding the "Armenian Genocide."
 
A Bosnian Serb now living in America, Nebojsa Malic, cries about how unrecognized the "genocide" against Serbs during WWII has been. (This raises an interesting point. Why have Armenians and Greeks become the darlings of the West, their claims accepted at face value, but not "Orthodox blood brothers," the Serbs?) It is true, Serbs were victims during WWII, at the hands of the Croats who, like the Armenians, joined ranks with the Fuehrer. (So, in fact, did some Bosnian Muslims.) Serb suffering in the past has no relation to Serb misdeeds during the break-up of Yugoslavia, of course, but this segment of Mr. Malic's article is right on the button:

Contrast ... with reports on Srebrenica, where the deaths of several thousand Bosnian Muslim men (claims range from 7,000 to 10,000) have been termed "genocide" by everyone from the press to the Hague Inquisition. Any attempt to question this judgment, based on numerous factual problems with both the allegations and the evidence offered, is denounced as "genocide denial." But the denial of a real, documented genocide in Croatia is not a problem!

To understand this paradox, it is necessary to understand that "genocide" has become above all a political notion. The mass murder of Jews at the hands of Hitler's Reich has been appropriated by the Empire as an argument in favor of "humanitarian intervention" worldwide (e.g., Bosnia, Kosovo). The mass murder of Serbs at the hands of the Ustasha, with the active involvement of the Catholic Church, does not fit into Empire's carefully crafted and nurtured image of Serbs as evil murderers, and Croats, "Bosnians," and Albanians as their innocent victims. Politically, it is worse than useless: it is harmful.



ADDENDUM, 9-07: "Bragging Rights Dept.": One half year after the above was written, the United Nations' highest court in the Hague, the International Court of Justice, declared in February 2007 that what Serbia and Bosnian Serbs did to the Bosnian Muslims, save for Srebrenica [where only the Bosnian Serbs were blamed for the act of genocide], did not constitute a “genocide." Ladies and gentlemen, please take note: Holdwater is a much more trustworthy voice in genocide matters than your typically agenda-ridden "genocide scholar."

 
Kosovo is no clear-cut case of "genocide," either.

Power writes, "With every KLA attack on a Serbian official, Serbian reprisals intensified, as Serb gunmen torched whole villages suspected of housing KLA loyalists. In the following year, some 3,000 Albanians were killed and some 300,000 others were expelled from their homes..." (P. 445.)

Now that is all horrible. On the other hand, would the response from a "good guy" nation be so different, when dealing with a "liberation army" of separatists? For example, what is described above is not too different than the heavy-handed actions of Israel we have become familiar with, but look the other way on. Why hasn't Israel made it into a chapter in Samantha Power's book? (That is a rhetorical question.)

Regardless, I'm grateful the Allied forces tweaked Serbia's nose in this episode. At least it served as payback to what Serbia had done to Albanians toward the beginning of the 20th century, in one of the more neglected episodes of "genocide." (The "Golgotha," which may have been one of the "real" first genocides of the 20th century. "Golgotha," by the way, is the same word used by Peter Balakian's lying "holy" relative, in the title of his book, one that persuaded Vahakn Dadrian to go off on his slimy genocide-affirming path.)

 
See also:

Samantha Power — Yet Another Armenian Apologist