The Purpose of the Armenian Resolution

I essentially said this when I first heard discussions about the dems moving this resolution out of committee. No surprise that some commentators are now at least speaking to the reason and not just how bad an idea it is.

Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.

That's what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn't about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It's a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals.

The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won't be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.

The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we'd be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.

It's a brilliant ploy - the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they're responding to their Armenian-American constituents - while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.

Brilliant? I don't agree. Devious, yes. Dangerous, yes. Brilliant, No.

Security-wise this is pretty clearly a bad decision. Giving the turks more of a reason to stand against us and continue to become radicalized is not strategically smart. Alienation of the turks won't get us anything beneficial and the Armenian resolution is completely useless . I've yet to hear any justification of how this resolution is anything more than talk. If the Dems are so upset with our international standing, why spend more time alienating partners?