Armenian resolution incredibly ill-timed

I had a long talk last night with Peter Mentzel, our discussion leader here at the Liberty Fund colloquium. He teaches history at Utah State University, specializing in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans. He told me he was at a conference last year in Turkey at which younger Turkish historians (almost all of whom acknowledge that the slaughter of Armenians in 1915 amounted to a genocide) tiptoed to the edge of public acknowledgment. But they still meet considerable resistance from older historians and officials, for the reason that many of the Young Turks who helped make the Ataturk secularist revolution that displaced the Ottomans were officers in 1915 and share some of the guilt. But Peter thought public acknowledgment by Turkey could (have) come in a few years. It has been a gradual, careful, years-long effort.

The Armenian genocide resolution in a House committee last week, however, torpedoed that effort, and made most Turks incredibly angry at the U.S. With tensions rising along the Iraq-Turkey border due to PKK raids across the border into Turkey, and pressure developing for the U.S. to get involved against a NATO ally that has been the most pro-Western country in the Middle East and a reliable U.S. ally, this was amazingly poor timing. The Bush administration deserves a great deal of the blame; the Iraqi invasion destabilized the region and strengthened Iran, and the administration has done much else to alienate Turkey. But for the resolution we can thank Nancy Pelosi.

Here in Indianapolis

I'm in Indianaapolis, at a conference of "War, Liberty and the Free Press," put on by the Liberty Fund. As I'm discovering, these sesssions are preceded by a lot of reading, in this case from David Hume and John Stuart Mill to Ted Carpenter. The first few seesssions have been interesting and lively, covering questions like what kinds of controls are justifiable during wartime. Should reporters become cheerleaders or try to maintain some distance and objectivity? Beyond avoiding news about troop movements that could inform the enemy and put troops in danger, are other controls justifiable? Do controls enacted during wartime set precedents for or carry over into peacetime? How are things different in a conflict that is not a declared war with a forseeable end?

Good people heere, including some I have known only as voices on the phone and am pleased to get to know a little better: Ivan Eland, Charles Pena, John Fund, Ted Carpenter, Doug Bandow, Andrea Millen Rich, John Hulsman, Lawrence Kaplan. Peter Mentzel of Utah State University is doing a good job as discussion leader.

Naturally, I'm maintaining the position that in wartime, when things really are a matter of life and death, it is all the more important for the press to be free.