GOODY TWO SHOES: Genocide Denial Shocks Genocide Denier
In a commentary ("It Didn’t Happen") and this video ("Iraq’s Vulnerabilities Overlooked") OpinionJournal’s James Taranto decries Barack Obama’s comments on the possibility of genocide in Iraq and John Kerry’s contention on C-SPAN’s "Washington Journal" that genocide did not engulf the region after the U.S. left Vietnam:
"Senator Obama gave an interview last week to The Associated Press, and made a comment, that in my view really ought to shock the conscience. He said that preventing genocide is not a good enough reason to leave American troops in Iraq. … [I]t’s OK to allow the genocide of Arabs and Muslims … I think that’s absolutely shocking. … The Democrats seem to have become the party … of denial or countenancing of the worst crimes against humanity."
Taranto is himself a genocide denier as regards the near-annihilation of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during 1915-1917 and privately admits, "this is a topic about which I have only a glancing interest."
The Stiletto is shocked that Taranto cannot understand that as an Armenian Genocide denier he lacks the moral authority to condemn someone else for having only a glancing interest in what happens to the Iraqis after the U.S. pulls out. But then, Taranto has repeatedly proven himself to be morally blind and hypocritical. Since he doesn’t appear to have a conscience, The Stiletto is cynical about Taranto being "shocked" by Obama. And don’t even get her started on The Wall Street Journal’s shocking record on anti-Armenian bias and Armenian Genocide denial.
Addendum: For several hours on Friday morning, this item was cross-posted on PoliticalMavens. James Taranto took exception at being called out as an Armenian Genocide denier:
The only thing I have written on the subject is that I "have no opinion on whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide or not," which is neither an affirmation nor a denial."
Taranto pressured the site’s editor – who recently suffered a grievous personal loss and is still in a fragile emotional state - to remove the post, thus squelching The Stiletto’s free speech rights.
But then, Taranto has never called upon Turkey to repeal Article 301, which criminalizes affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, but he roundly condemned a similar law France was considering last year to criminalize speech denying the Armenian Genocide (the same column from which he quotes above).
If no one can write or talk about the Armenian Genocide, then it didn’t happen, right, Taranto?
Well Taranto has no leverage with The Stiletto, so she reiterates that he is guilty of everything he wants to hang on Obama in his commentary.
Taranto accuses Obama of "engaging in sophistry," adding:
By his logic, if America lacks the capacity to intervene everywhere there is ethnic killing, it has no obligation to intervene anywhere - and perhaps an obligation to intervene nowhere. His reasoning elevates consistency into the cardinal virtue, making the perfect the enemy of the good.
In claiming that he neither affirmed nor denied the Armenian Genocide when he wrote that he had "no opinion on whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide or not," Taranto is engaging in sophistry. His reasoning elevates willful ignorance into the cardinal virtue, making the noncommittal the enemy of the truthful.
To have "no opinion," Taranto must be, and remain, willfully ignorant of the facts – and of the voluminous eyewitness accounts by journalists, missionaries, diplomats and survivors, and of the numerous books based on these records. Remarkable that someone in his profession would be so incurious.
Like the five stages of grief, there are also stages of genocide denial:
While the arguments made by a genocide denier vary depending on which genocide is being denied, most arguments have a common basis. The accusations of a Genocide denier usually include conspiracies, stating that the targeted ethnic group conspired against the accused state with its enemies, that death tolls have been exaggerated in order to create undeserved sympathy, that the victims provoked the actions against themselves, through either armed insurrection or exploitation of the majority, and that the evidence supporting a genocide thesis was largely fabricated.
Thus the second part of Taranto’s denier-denial "whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide or not" is in fact a denial, as it subtly invokes all of the tactics used by Genocide and Holocaust deniers in one shot. Though morally challenged and hypocritical, no one can accuse Taranto of not being clever.
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