857) Letter to the LA Times : "YOUR EDITORIAL July 16 2006 Armenian Genocide! " by Sukru Aya

From: SS Aya
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 1:19 PM
To: 'letters@latimes.com'
Subject: YOUR EDITORIAL July 16 2006 Armenian Genocide!

Gentlemen

I have read your article based on stagnant rhetoric of biased propaganda, circulating the World for over a century, because Turks never took this matter of continuous slandering for serious. This may because we are all raised, without any racial or other types of discriminatory defects, and our feelings of general compassion and tolerance with forgiveness, surpass by far our moments of anger or thoughts of revenge. Your good selvesand the vast majority of your readers, whom you try to please with your buttering comments, may be embedded in greasing and inverting historical realities, without any valid evidence, which has become nothing, but the style of living, breathing with hatred and vengeance. 

First of all, "there was no motive/reason, time or means" to plan or implement any genocide. If you kindly open and read the attachment, unless given evidences are proven fake, you have to admit logically, that a simple act of "inability, incapacity, shortages, and other obligatory hardships" cannot be classified as an act of genocide. 


I am in the process of preparing a book based on "anti-Turkish" writers, including respected Armenian names such as Lalayan, Katchaznouni, Nassibian and many other world respected authorities, and even excluding the authors who have long written that an act of "war inside war and bi-lateral carnation" cannot be named a genocide, I have a pile of written evidence that the whole thing isa hoax and that some people "are making a living and have good reasons to keep this stew hot, even if it is stale and rotten". 


Even below excerpts, are enough to show the "fingers and interests of the super powers" under the blanket of "liberty, freedom, save the Christians" and similar bullies. Below remarks should make any American think (even if of Armenian ethnicity) as regards the injustice and equality by blaming a whole nation in their very struggle of existence against traitors, at war with enemies on three fronts. Even if we are to forget the complete wiping of the AmericanIndians with small-pox infected blankets, or the fact that U.S. soldiers took no Japanese soldiers as prisoner in Okinawa, but shot them all with hands up, the treat of the American citizen Japanese, who did not revolt or get involved in any act of betrayal and their imprisonment in barb wired camps, and even the very last examples of what is happening in the Middle East, exceed by far thelenient, but obligatorily deprivate and lamed treat of the "Relocated Armenians", who, mostly returned back to theirhomes or took refuge to other countries. The past propaganda of "onward Christian soldiers" continues full fledged in USA with sermons in mega-churches and TV stations, pulling the human wisdom out of "thinking and using intelligence andindulging in the fictitious stories of fundamentalist holy books, which brought and brings nothing but disaster to humanity. And you Gentlemen are beating the same tam-tam drums. I hope that "your reasoning will suppressyour prejudices" and you will be at comfort of soul, when going to sleep or look into the mirror realizing your wrong conclusions.

Kind regards

Sukru S. Aya




"AMERICAN THEOCRACY"
Kevin Phillips - Viking - ISBN 0-670-03486-X

Page 100

Christianity in the United States, especially Protestantism, has always include had an evangelical - which is to say, missionary - and frequently a radical or combative streak. Some message has always had to be preached, punched, or proselytized. Once in awhile that excitability has been economic - most notably in the case of the Social Gospel of the 1890s, which searched through Scripture to document the Jesus who emphasized caring fir the poor and hungry. In the twentieth century, though, religious zealin the United States usually focused on something quite different: individual pursuit of salvation through spiritual rebirth, often in circumstances of sect-driven millenarian countdowns to the so-called end times and an awaited return of Christ. These beliefs have often been accompanied by great revivals; emotionalism; eccentricities of quaking, shaking,and speaking in tongues: characterization of the Bible as in errant; and wild-eyed invocation of dubious prophecies in the Book of Revelation. No other contemporary Western nation shares this religious intensity and its concomitant proclamation that Americans are Gods chosen people and nation. George W Bush has averred this belief on many occasions.

In its recent practice, the radical side of U.S. religionhas embraced cultural anti modernism, war hawkishness, Armageddon prophecy, and in the case of conservative fundamentalists, a demand for governments by literal biblical interpretation. In the 1800s, religious historians generally minimized the sectarianthrust of religious excess, but recent years have brought more candor.

Page 251

We have seen that between 1870 and 1914 the British developed a national psychosis of war expectation, and the United States displayed a lesser version in 1917 -1918. Several hooks have been written about the U.S. churchesmilitancy, for the rhetoric among U.S. clergy was as overblown as any in Europe

Page 252

Thus, just as scholars of the British war mentality in the years prior in 1914 do well to study the patriotic bombast of the music halls, the stanzas of Onward, Christian Soldiers,and the endless books predicting German invasions, fathoming the Bush electorate requires its own study materials.

Page 255

... However, before we look at pre-millennialisms impact on U.S. policy in the Middle East, it is useful to recall the calamitous preWorld War I legacy of British evangelicalism, moral imperialism, and religious hawkishness. In some ways, although certainly not all, the United States picked up the evangelical baton Britain dropped nearly a century agoand ironically, few Americans were more aware of Britains 1917 invasion of the Turkish-controlled holy land than George W. Bush. ...

... An itinerant preacher, Chambers spent his last days bringing the gospel to Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt in late 1917 for the invasion of Palestine and the intended Christmas time capture of Jerusalem.

... By 1914 many British churches were all but draped in flags. According to historian Arthur Marwick, ...

Page 257

War that will end war, caught the public fancy because it appeared to fulfill St. Johns prophecy of the war between the legions of God and Satan, conveniently defined as England and Germany, respectively.

... The romance of the Crusades was alive and breathing strongly. As French and British imperialism moved into the lands of Islam during the nineteenth century, both nations turned out books with titles like The Cross and the Crescent and art like Delacroixs painting The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople.

... German East Africa had been captured, Egypt became a formal British protectorate in 1919, and Persia became an informal one, leaving the holy LandPalestine, Jordan, and Mesopotamiaas the missing link in complete British dominance from Cape Town to Burma. Pushed by Lloyd George, Britain had by the end of 1918 sent 1,084,000

Page 258

British and Commonwealth troops into Ottoman territory to control the carving up, and the so-called settlement of 1922 fulfilled British ambition.

Nevertheless, by 19221923 British policy makers knew that the foundations of these ambitions had collapsed. Mary troops had been with drawn in 1919, and then Britains economy fell into a deep downturn in 1920 and 1921. ..

... As early as 1919 Britain urged the United States to take up a peacekeeping role in Constantinople and Armenia, but Congress declined.

Slippage at home was visible in the inability of British churches to command their former respect and Sunday attendance. The Church of England lost public confidence throughits thoughtless wartime flag-waving, and the largely evangelical nonconformists lost ground because their war supportmany had been caught up in the drumbeat of moral imperialism by 1914mocked their earlier peacetime priorities and pre- occupation with social progress. ...

Page 259

and irrevocably and become and more ablaze for the glory of God. For Chambers, said The Times, the enemy was evil, religious duty was clear, and Christian soldier marched onwards in a straight line.

Events in the Middle East had been part of Britains post-World War I debacle. Nearly a century later error was about to be blindly repeated by a president of the United States who shared Lloyd Georges biblical frame of reference, thought e enemy was evil, and failed to profit from the larger lesson taught by history.

Since the collapse of the Union, America has taken up the war whoops of militant Protestantism, the evangelical Christian missionary hopes and demands, the heady talk about bringing liberty and freedom to newshores, the tingle of the old Christian-Muslim blood feud, the biblical preoccupation with Israel and the scenarios of the end times and Armageddonthe whole entrapping drama that played in British political theater a century ago. American evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal churches, in turn become the new flag bearers of crusades against Islams evil ones. ...

Yet much of their activity purports to be missionary. Instead of British church people and Bible societies accompanying Queen Victoriassoldiers to India, we have U.S. missionaries following the flag to the Middle East. Prior to World War II he mainline U.S. churches led missionary work, but today, says historian Paul Harvey, American foreign mission efforts are dominated by conservativeevangelical groups (the Southern Baptist Convention and the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination, are the two largest senders of career missionaries) and Mormons (by far the largest sender of non-career missionaries).

Page 260

By 2003, after a decade long drumbeat by religious organizations Urging the United States to defend foreign Christian populationsanother page taken from British nineteenth century experience the principal evangelical churches were not just war supporters but active mission planners. A year after the military took Baghdad, a survey by the Los Angeles Times found thirty evangelical missions in the city Kyle Fisk, executive administrator of the National Association of Evangelicals, told the newspaper that Iraq will become the center for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Iran, Libya and throughout the Middle East....

... Later, even during World War I, the Ottoman Empire was cast in the antichrist role, and by the 1970s fundamentalists were transferring that evil to the Arab world.

Page 298

The only thing new in the world is the history we dont know, - Harry S Truman

The lesson of history is that we dont learn the lessons of history. Thomas G. Donlan, Barrons, 2005

Page 383

... But when the Armageddon of 1914 - 1918 brought forty million deaths instead of Christs return, the embarrassment was not limited to flag bedecked Anglican churches or nonconformist chapels that had joined in the parade. Religion in general seemed to have failed, and British church attendance shrank - and then shrank again. Itis not hard to imagine something similar happening in the United States by 2030 or 2040 as two or three decades of cynicism claim religious as well as economic and political victims. ...