Possibly we should look in the mirror. I may be very uninformed, but why is this neccessary right now. Do we not have enough going on? But most importantly to me is, I have not heard the work "genocide" in reference to the native people we decemated and wiped out to make this our home, as well as the people we dragged from their home on another continent and built our country on their backs and lives. Perhaps we should first deal with our own vocabulary before we try and decide what to call despicable events in the history of other countries.

Sent by Deborah - Rhode Island | 11:12 AM ET | 10-11-2007

Dear Deborah, ever since 1870ies, the so-called "Armenian Question" was a matter of political trade and political games of biggest powers of the time and it still remains so. The House democrats care less for Armenians and their Genocide, but they really care for is to madden George W. Bush. When being elected to the House of Representatives last year, they promised many things, however, as of today they were not able to deliver any of those, Bush and republicans blocked everything from returning soldiers from Iraq to healthcare for poor children. This time Bush will have top pay a really high political price to have democrats back off this issue - again, this is just an issue of political trade and nothing more.

Sent by Alex | 3:26 PM ET | 10-11-2007

You are right Deborah from R.I., so let me correct that. The American government, largely (but not completely) with the consent of the American people, did in fact attempt genocide against the Native Americans. If the president on our $20 bill, Andrew Jackson, had got his way, they would have all been slaughtered. In spirit, he was no different than any other mass murderer. Now that this has been accomplished, can we start talking about what the Turks did to the Armenians and can we use the word genocide? Remember what Hitler was quoted as saying; something like "who remembers the Armenians?" Better late than never.

Sent by John R. Otten | 3:47 PM ET | 10-11-2007

I wrote NPR about the way they covered this story yesterday on Morning Edition - with three seemingly 'detailed' stories by Brian Naylor, David Welna and Ivan Watson. What energized me was, given the amount of time devoted to this story, the pointed lack of information about the REAL STORY, which is about the back room wheeling and dealing that allowed this thing to come to a vote in the first place. The plot here is thicker than a Frisco fog: a tale of political payback, frantic appeals to the Jewish lobby by senior Turkish officials and to the Israeli PM by his Turkish counterpart, the desire to stick it to Bush and gain political advantage and probably a lot of stuff that we out here can???t know about. And there is an internal Turkish side of this that was not mentioned ??? the rising tension in Turkey between secularists and Islamists and the real implications of a congressional resolution for Turkey. It is not, as Lantos said, simply the castigation of a bygone regime but not of a nation. Not a whiff of this from Mssrs Naylor, Welna and Watson. And the reason I wrote is because in this day and age NPR is about the last bastion of decent news coverage this side of the bloggosphere. When NPR won't deliver the goods, who will? So I wrote and asked WHY? And the response I got was interesting. "We welcome praise, as well as criticism, and your thoughts will be taken into consideration" sniffed Melanie of NPR. Well, Melanie, if I want milktoast I will turn to CNN, but I am not fond of it. What is troubling to me is that NPR (or its producers) is either afraid to turn up the heat a little bit on our esteemed leaders, or what is possibly worse, that they don???t believe that their listeners have the patience or the interest to hear how our great democracy really works.

Sent by Ethan Boger | 5:29 PM ET | 10-12-2007

The committee vote essentially shows that the expatriate Armenian propaganda efforts and those of genocide advocates have more influence in US politics than historical perspective and the Turkish lobby. In my travels throughout Asia Minor, I never met a Turk who denied the senseless deaths of Armenians during the poorly executed efforts to relocate them away from the Russian border to areas further south. Turco-armenians freely identify their ethnic identity and express none of the antiTurkish sentiments that I have experienced outside of Turkey. I never sensed any willingness to cover up the atrocities nor attempts to gloss over the past during the chaos after the collapse and dissolution of the Ottoman empire. Turkish nationalism was an unfortunate aspect of the empire's downfall just as the negative aspects of nationalism has marked much of the 20th century up to today.
I am at a loss how this issue remains valid outside academic circles even as it taints discussions and priorities on university campi. Turkish courts prosecuted the three leaders of the relocation plan and found them guilty and ordered their executions. All three fled the country and were hunted down and killed by Armenian assassins. If this doesn't place enough distance between the charge of genocide and the prosecuted acts of a renegade leaders in the chaos of a crumbling empire,is it not enough to point out the Armenians in question were killed in 1915 and the Turkish Republic wasn't founded until 1923.

Sent by Mitchell Hough | 7:45 AM ET | 10-13-2007