Opinion divided on genocide bill

Re “Genocide bill spurs Turkish envoy’s recall,” Oct. 12

The Turkish ambassador to the U.S. has been withdrawn, and there is an indication that Turkey is angry with the U.S. -- all because the U.S. may declare that the killing of about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was genocide. So it is necessary to ask, what has suddenly happened in the U.S. to bring this almost century-old matter to the political forefront?

This is not the sort of matter that ought to be occupying any political party in any country, other than perhaps the one where it happened. We know that a government change is possible in the U.S. in the near future, and in that change perhaps you ought to make certain you get rid of the clowns who are intent on creating unnecessary problems. Surely you have enough already?

Geoff Cass

Australia

When Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent, coined the term “genocide” in 1944, he specifically cited what had happened to the Armenians and later to the Jews as his impetus for coming up with a word that would effectively describe those horrors. If the word was invented for this purpose, why the dispute about using it to describe what happened to the Armenians? The word was created to describe this very event.

Margaret A.

Mgrublian

Pasadena

Why should one American soldier be put in harm’s way for an Armenian who died in 1915? What happened in 1915 should stay in 1915. It is insane to go out of our way to insult an ally in 2007 for something that occurred in 1915.

What next, condemn Spain for the Inquisition?

Alberto Marrero

Salas

Granada Hills

Why is the Bush administration opposed to the possibility that Turkey may initiate military action against the Kurds in northern Iraq? We invaded Iraq partly because Saddam Hussein supposedly harbored Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization that threatened the United States. We threaten Iran because it provides arms to militias attacking U.S. troops. Kurdish rebels have already mounted cross-border incursions into Turkey from Iraq and then slipped back across the border. Surely Turkey has as much right to defend itself as does the U.S. Or is the doctrine of preemptive war reserved only for us?

Howard S. Blum

Thousand Oaks

Re “Labeling genocide won’t halt it,” Opinion, Oct. 15

Niall Ferguson suggests that labeling the massacre of Armenians in World War I a genocide makes the “posturing and irresponsible Congress” complicit in Iraqi genocide. Whether the resolution was advisable or not, for an Iraq war advocate like Ferguson to blame the current Democratic Congress for the humanitarian catastrophe that is Iraq requires an unmatched level of gall. Surely, Mr. Ferguson, you must be joking.

Amir Alexander

West Hills