Urges Congress to Oppose Legislation Authorizing Escalation of Violence
WASHINGTON–The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), citing the Armenian American community’s profound concern for the fate of Syria’s Armenian population and the welfare of all of Syria’s citizens, circulated letters today across Capitol Hill calling on Members of the U.S. House and Senate to oppose legislation authorizing U.S. strikes against Syria.
“As our nation’s elected representatives gather this week to consider potential U.S. actions against Syrian targets, we wish to add our voice, as Americans of Armenian heritage, to those of our fellow citizens who oppose American military strikes and are against any escalation of violence. Such an escalation would very likely create further challenges and lead to serious additional harm to Christian communities, including Syria’s Armenian minority,” said ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian in letters to U.S. legislators. “We take this stand mindful of the horrific human suffering that armed conflict has already visited across Syria, including the death and destruction being endured, to this day, by Armenians and other Christian communities. There has already been too much bloodshed, too much brutality, and too much suffering. An escalation in aggression can neither save lives nor help bring about peace.”
The ANCA message went on to stress that, “We believe that the advancement of our national interests, the enhancement of U.S. standing, the strengthening of the international rule-of-law system, and the promotion of stability and humanitarian and democratic values in this vital region, will not be facilitated by American attacks. We look to our government to seek a diplomatic settlement, and to reinforce our nation’s call upon all parties to cease any attacks on civilians, to limit armed operations to military targets, and to refrain from violence, intimidation, and discrimination against Christians and other vulnerable minorities.”
As a follow up to longstanding ANCA advocacy for effective, needs-based delivery of humanitarian aid to Armenian and all at-risk populations, Hachikian noted that Armenian Americans “remain troubled that, despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, serious gaps remain in terms of U.S.-supplied and funded relief aid actually reaching at-risk Armenian and other minority populations, in Aleppo and throughout Syria.” He added that Equally troubling has been the very limited U.S. support for landlocked and blockaded Armenia’s efforts to support and resettle thousands fleeing the Syria crisis. We urge you, in cooperation with your colleagues and our community (which is very actively engaged in relief efforts), to work with the Administration to urgently address these shortcomings.”
An action alert, based on the ANCA website, provides an opportunity for community members to send a similar message to their U.S. Representatives and Senators: http://www.anca.org/syria
Guest Contributor
I have stopped watching American news media outlets as they keep paddling a pack of lies to the American people,there is no objectivity nor any investigation in what they are putting out to the public,they did the same with Iraq another pack of lies and as a result hundreds of thousands died not to mention the illegal use of depleted uranium ammunition in Felluja where thousands of Iraqi kids and other citizens are born sick or becoming sick, and yes Abu Ghraib prison and torture abuse,this is USA for you.
I am now watching Russia Today as they have a 24 hour English service news debates,I am very pleased with their objectivity,its 100% better than CNN and Fox not to mention the others.
Yes, I agree 100% that there should be no attack on Syria its illegal under any international law,also all the evidence presented on capitol hill is a pack of lies,it only serves the interests of the oil/pipeline and military industrial complex.
Try it.
I agree !00% that there should be no attack on Syria and have called the offices of
Representative Caolyn Maloney, Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumer, but have had difficulty reaching Senator Kirsten Gillibran…line busy or voice-mail full. I also e-maild President Obama. The President should just say the people of the United States of America have said NO, They do not want us militarily involved.
As an Armenian-American I oppose our government to strike against Syrian taking into consideration a
huge number of Armenian-Syrians will be killed for no reason.
Why we should care about Assad let his oppositions deal with him and his regime, therefore, I am against the strike.
I am also opposed to American strikes in Syria. The rebels along with Turks & Azeri’s have attacked the Armenian Quarter in Aleppo damaging homes, businesses and whereby 10,000 Armenian’s have fled to other lands. This is work of Pres. Erdogan of Turkey. President Assad & past presidents of Syria have never harmed the Armenian Community and gave Armenian’s safe haven since the Armenian Genocide. If any nation must enter Syria, then it should be the United Nations only.
This is a tough one from Diaspora perspective. Whenever I see any government killing civilians, my immediate frame of reference is massacre and Genocide. But in Syria, the best organized insurgents are Sharia murderers who would kill or enslave every Christian. Assad like Saddam treats us better than these people would. I want always for the world to stop massacre as we wish it had 98 years ago. But intervention here = dead or exiled Christians.
As an American I oppose strikes because we can’t predict the outcome, can’t see how they will stop atrocities, and could light a Workd War I like fuse.
All we can do is pray.
US stay out! Stop supplying weapons and intelligence to the invading terrorists in Syria.
what ever the Turks want, I am against..
About 90% of Americans oppose any military intervention in that region. Other than the Kurds (who fight al-nusra/al-Qaeda in Syria), there are no parties to support there. Let the Arab League handle their Arab problems (or are they afraid they might soil their linen gowns?). We want nothing to do with them. Send your own Arab kids there to fight and die for nothing, we’ll pass.
I see very difference between the Egyptian Army gunning-down a thousand unarmed protesters or 1,000 unarmed civilians being gassed in Syria.
It’s all very well to make 11th-hour protests. No sorry, it IS NOT all very well. Why were Armenians not making protests when those protests could have made a difference? Where were the protests a year ago, when Obama’s “red line” con to set Syria up was initiated? Or two years ago, when the plan to destroy Syria got underway? Armenians in America could have had a powerful voice because they were in the unique position of being closely connected to the region, yet would not have been seen by the mass of Americans as part of the region’s core problem (i.e. they were not Muslims). But nevermind the ongoing genocide of Armenians in Syria, and nevermind the just finished one in Iraq – the only one the ANCA thinks worth bothering about is the long finished on in Turkey.
USA has become al-Qaeda’s air force and spokesman,and we are led to believe that US is fighting terrorist.
Its hand in glove working with al-Qaeda,its a disgrace for Obama and Kerry ( it reminds me of Tom & Jerry cartoon.]
I hope and trust that the American people, congress and religious leaders have more sense and responsibility in turning this crazy motion down by not authorising any attack on Syria.
Isn’t Obama’s blunders in Libya, and Egypt with Morsi’s Govt., not enough for the US to realize that we can not change middle East politics; involvement will only bring Islamist radicals to spread like wildfire. As has been demonstrated for centuries,when it comes to the Armenian communities in both Egypt, Syria and the rest of the Middle East Armenians have always been respected and protected as contributing members of their respective countries.
This exact protest letter could have been written by a lobbying group back in 1915, urging America not to “interfere” into the “civil war” in Turkey … despite the innocent deaths. “It is not our problem, sir. And it is very complicated. Stay out!” In sum, the Armenian position on Syria attack is highly hypocritical. So, what you are saying is, we care about stopping innocent civilian deaths only when they are Armenian. Forget about the Muslim Syrian children being gassed to death … No, sir, they are not Armenian. So, therewith goes out of the window the Armenian pretensions (e.g., Sudan) that they care about ALL genocides and atrocities. True, I myself would vote no to Syrian intervention. But if I were an Armenian, I would find it hypocritical to oppose a humanitarian intervention to stop innocent deaths in a “faraway complicated land”.
Karim:
before bloviating about things you know nothing about, research and learn.
The innocent Muslim children were gassed to death by their fellow Muslim Al-Qaeda and/or Al-Nusra terrorists, paid for and amply supplied by Sunni Muslim terrorist-master Wahhabi Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
It was a crude provocation that went horribly wrong.
It should be obvious to even you that Assad has no reason to resort to chemical weapons, since his army is resurgent and the terrorist invaders are on the defensive.
The so-called ‘civil-war’ is a foreign inspired and directed Neocon project to destroy Syria as a sovereign state.
There are many who will benefit from that, e.g. Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia – just to name a few.
The savage Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra terrorists have no compunction detonating terrorist bombs in civilian areas of Damascus and killing hundreds of innocent Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites, and Christian civilians, including (Muslim) children.
The two-legged animals even resort to cannibalism.
Did you know that several hundred Azerbaijani terrorists are also in Syria, murdering Syrian civilians ?
An estimated 100,000 Syrian people have died as a result of Neocon terror campaign unleashed against Syria: for the simple reason that Assad will not bow or sell himself to Wahhabi Neocon terror masters living comfortably in Riyadh, while millions of innocent Syrians have become homeless or refugees.
The sooner foreign supported foreign terrorists are wiped out, the sooner Syria can return to normalcy and the bloodletting will stop.
Any US Neocon bombing of Syria will help the terrorists, prolong the war, and cause additional hundreds of thousands of Syrian deaths.
That is why Armenian-American organizations are working to defeat the US Neocon Anti-American warmongers in the US Congress.
So find another excuse to vent your pent-up Anti-Armenian hatred.
And comparing the Armenian Genocide to what is going on in Syria is beneath contempt: shows your supposed acceptance of the AG to be a sham.
Not surprising, since you have a problem remembering the organized, pre-planned massacres of Armenian civilians, including children, by your Turkbeijani Musavat fascist murderers in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku.
Oh, sorry: just remembered; you were there in Baku and there was no pogrom, right ?
Karim,
There was no civil war in Turkey in 1915. There was a World War that Turkey entered in voluntarily in hopes of recapturing the territories the Europeans liberated from Turkish occupation, in the Balkans in particular. There also was the preplanned and state-sponsored mass extermination of the Armenians to clear occupied Western Armenia of all its indigenous Armenian population to carve out Turkey for the Turks only.
You never seem to quit turning and twisting every decision the Armenians make into some delusions you are suffering from. You accusing the Armenians of only caring about themselves and not about the so-called and I quote “Muslim Syrian children” is like a pot calling the kettle black.
The Armenians were wiped out of their homeland less than a hundred years ago and 1,500,000 murdered, many of them women and children, at the hands of barbaric and despicable coward Turks. Despite all these human losses, how many Muslim countries can you name today that have recognized the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and held Turkey responsible for it? NONE!
Why send the unwilling to be led by the unqualified, to kill the unfortunate, only to die for the ungrateful?
.
1915 was a different universe. The United States was isolationist. US “intervention” in Turkey (Ottoman Empire) in 1915 would have been an act of war against the central powers, leading the US into a war it never really wanted to be a part of. International norms and laws were not well established in 1915, nor had the US established itself as the world police. So no, you couldn’t write that letter in 1915.
Karim, back in 1915 would you have had America intervening to stop all the “innocent Turkish civilians” being massacred by Armenians using their Russian-supplied weapons? After all, Turkey will have provided America with ample evidence for the crimes (since an Armenian corpse is easily made a Turkish one – just stick a Koran in its pocket), and will even have photos of all those carefully posed stockpiles of weapons found in Armenian homes.
There is no “humantarian intervention” being planned for Syria – there is only military intervention aimed at toppling the legitimate government of Syria and replacing it with an alternative regime whose immediate internal policy goal will be genocide.
Karim
‘… a lobbying group back in 1919, urging America not to “interfere” into the “civil war” in Turkey’? What is this gibberish? Was there an Armenian lobby in the US at that time? Did US interfere in Turkey affairs then? Was it a “civil war” or A Genocide?
As for motives for opposing militray intervention – and not “humanitarian” intervention, as you misleadingly put it – isn’t it true that any ethnic lobbying group is expected to care for the lot of its own people when they are in danger? Not that the lives of other groups are unimportant, but you are talking as if any Azeri lobbying group would keep silent or just issue general declarations condmning interference and war should a group of your people be exposed to danger anywhere! Stop making yourself ridiculous professor Karim.