More about Turkey

We've been discussing whether it's a good idea for Congress to pursue the resolution declaring the Turkish genocide of Armenians to be what it was: genocide. Is it meaningful at this late date, is it the right time to be doing it, does it hurt our foreign policy to do it?

Chris Hitchens is interested in the same questions, only he's approaching it from a slightly different perspective. He's got a piece in Slate arguing, as the title puts it, that the United States should be squeezing Turkey, not the other way around.

On this occasion I think Hitch is right. On the other hand, the reasons he's right illustrate once again what a mess Bush has made of American foreign policy. We wouldn't be nearly so concerned about pissing off Turkey if we didn't need them so badly in our war on Iraq. Because we need their help, we're dependent on them, so we can't afford to tell the truth about the Armenian genocide.

So why are we talking about this as though it's Nancy Pelosi's fault, and not Bush's?