By Richard E Walrath

All I’m reading about is the million Armenians the Turks killed in 1915 and whether or not this was genocide. 

There’s no question that it happened–not even too much of a dispute about how many. 

Was it a million or two million?  Is that  what the debate is about?  It was genocide if it was two million killed, but not if it was "only" one million?  Is that the question?

A million or two million people are wiped out, and the debate is whether or not this meets the standard to be called genocide.  If not, then what?  If so, so what?

The dispute seems to be whether or not to label killing a million or two million people genocide.  Are the  dead better or worse off if it was genocide?

Does it make it better or worse if it was or wasn’t genocide?   

The number doesn’t matter – the international law definition of genocide as a crime has two parts; intention and action.  It’s basically a ‘systematic pattern of coordinated acts’ against a group and the group may be national, ethnical, racial or religious.

More may be read at the following site:

Excerpt from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (For full text click here)

Genocide is like Hitler and Nazi Germany. That’s not a label that Turkey wants even though the government today is totally different from the Ottoman Empire. 

This has come up routinely in the past, but it never got anywhere because there was a Republican Congress.  After the House Foreign Relations Committee votes on Wednesday, President Abdullah Gul warned the United States, in a statement, that a positive vote by the U.S. House of Representatives could work against the United States.

There are a number of states–Michigan for one–with a lot of Armenians.  Turkey is a vital ally in the Bush war in Iraq, so a House vote could make a lot of trouble for him.