October 20, 2000
To: President William Jefferson Clinton
House Speaker Dennis Hastert
The Boston Globe
By colluding to withdraw House Resolution 596 which recognizes the genocide committed in 1915 by the Ottoman Turkish government against the Armenian people, President William Jefferson Clinton and GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert have once again shown that when morality and truth collide with greed and politics, the ending is rarely a happy one.
The Genocide happened; one and one-half million men, women, and children were savagely tortured and murdered for the crime of having a different faith and ethnicity. Our own State Department records of the time prove this, as do thousands of other documents and photographs. Yet the United States, which once recognized and deplored this atrocity, now bends over backwards in order to oblige those who would deny it.
'Peace', we're told. It's all in the cause of peace. But what kind of peace is bought by sanctifying the memories of murderers? How long can peace last that denies justice to hundreds of thousands of murdered children? And when the next rogue government decides to commit genocide, what moral standing will the United States have to condemn it?
I am ashamed of the actions of my government. Eighty-five years from now, who will pay or use threats to cover up the story of this decision, the record of our shame?
Peter Maranci
Woonsocket, RI
[email protected]
Copyright 2000 Peter Maranci