Square Hole, Round Peg

I'm not saying that Sullivan is wrong here, maybe not even inconsistent, but it's still a curious calculus of facts, and negations. On the one hand, speaking of Congress:

The decision...to make...a point about the Armenian genocide of almost a
century ago is foolish in the extreme.

And of course, this type of recognition isn't an entirely novel thing in American history. Reagan equated the Armenian genocide with the Holocaust. On the other hand, speaking of that 1940's horror:

It is easy to become numb to an outrage. But what just happened in Tehran -
the Holocaust denial conference - really requires us ">not to give in to
numbness. Anyone who seriously wants to question the fact of one of the
greatest crimes in human history is a monster. Period.

So, it's wrong for the American Congress to recognize the American genocide; it's also wrong for the Iranian president to not recognize the Jewish genocide. Perhaps agnosticm of genocides is the safest position.

You may have noticed the ellipses in my excerpt of Sullivan. That deliberate rhetorical tactic modified this statement in Sullivan's original:

The decision to antagonize our most important ally in the war against Islamist
extremism to make a symbolic point about the Armenian genocide of almost a
century ago is foolish in the extreme.

Sullivan leaps to conclusions that warrant parsing. "The decision to antagonize" -- no. One of the effects of the Congressional decisions was to antagonize the Turks. At least if you accept the superficial facts. Why this? Why now? Middle Eastern politics, a storm of oil, money, identity politics, (and 150K American soldiers) begs those questions.

Even the most naive observer of the young Turks recognizes this gesture's insult. The Turks' backlash is fomenting. That diplomatic recall is likely prelude; escalations would see Turkish incursions into Kurdish controlled northern Iraq to relieve Turkey of long standing irritants. The United States has hitherto contained that violent impulse.

Underscoring that freshly possible scenario, Democrat Tom Lantos argued: "We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying."

The Congressional committee vote crossed party lines.

Some things just don't seem to fit where they should.

Full disclosure: I'm long energy interests. And apologies to those using feed readers.