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Harut Sassounian
California Courier Editor
Harut Sassounian is the publisher of The California Courier, a weekly newspaper based in Glendale, Calif. He is the president of the Armenia Artsakh Fund, a non-profit organization that has donated to Armenia and Artsakh one billion dollars of humanitarian aid, mostly medicines, since 1989 (including its predecessor, the United Armenian Fund). He has been decorated by the presidents of Armenia and Artsakh and the heads of the Armenian Apostolic and Catholic churches. He is also the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
Such activities, moral or immoral, right or wrong, are a fact of life in the United States. It is readily available to Armenian authors to do the same.
“Right”… From Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver to the members of the United States Congress, such activities have one name: moral prostitution. “Facts of life” never changed nor will they ever change the universal human values… in this country or any other.
Apart from their obvious hydrocarbon wealth with which they buy off important politicians, businessmen, journalists, etc. like all lobbies do, the Azerbaijanis’ success in their lobbying activities in the United States and in other countries, is also because they studied and are emulating the Armenian and Jewish lobbies, which are of course way older and powerful, especially the latter, and with whom the Azerbaijanis cooperate very closely.
The Azerbaijanis are emulating the same vigor of the Armenian lobby, with their own cause with successful results. The Armenian lobby which used to be so successful, has slacked off and is not so robust as they used to be. What are the underlying reasons for this?
While Armenia gets blamed for being pro-Russian in some US quarters (which is of course a geostrategic necessity and even survival strategy for Armenia in a neigborhood bordering a very hostile Azerbaijan and Turkey), Azerbaijan is no less pro-Russian than Armenia, and has even closer economic and military relations with Russia, yet it doesn’t get blamed for this, as Armenia does.
In addition, Azerbaijan has an atrocious human rights record, which is often brushed aside by the West. And while Armenia’s human rights record is far form perfect, it is much better than all of its neighbors, except Georgia, but it gets reprimanded by the United States.
Russia loves scenario like this, in order to bring Armenian Diaspora into Russia’s orbit!
Who cares?! You want to know why many Armenians are not actively lobbying in US as they used to do? It is simple. After years of lobbying, they finally realized that they are wasting their money and time! Truth is that major US foreign policy decisions are not going to be influenced by this type of ethnic lobbying. Jews are a different story, they have their representatives among the ruling elite.
Azerbaijan is more than welcome to squander more money on the likes of Dan Barton. That money could have been spent on building schools, hospitals or universities in Baku. If Azerbaijanis were smart they would have asked their leadership why is it that in spite of billions of dollars of oil revenue their biggest bank, International Bank of Azerbaijan, has filed for bankruptcy protection in New York a few months ago.
I wish Mr. Sassounian would spend more time on writing about Armenia’s democratization instead of Erdogan or Dan Barton. Our biggest failure after more than 20 years of Armenia’s independence is not our lobbying in Washington, it is the failure to turn Armenia into a democratic state. After the April war, many Armenians wrote about Israeli sophisticated drones used against Armenians but no one even mentioned that our major problem was night vision goggles that our soldiers did not have on the line of contact. You will be surprised to know that in 1967 during the 6 day war, Israel still didn’t have its own TV broadcast since their leadership considered it some type of unnecessary luxury. Israel at the time already had nuclear weapons.