armenian genocide

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/07/news/turkey.php

Another forgotten chapter of history. People associate Hitler as the inventor of genocide. But in fact, what Hitler did was combine ruthless efficiency, industrial processes, and an ingrown (and fed) fiery hatred of specific groups of people (Jews mostly, but just about everyone got it) to commit the most massive atrocity on human records thus far. But it was hardly a new idea. In fact, it wasn't even new for that century. Something neglected in the pages of the Eastern front of WWI (not II, which had it's own patchy history) is the history Armenians have with the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The Turks would hardly want us to remember it as the facts indicate it is. Simply declaring that a country has a dirty past is also not a commitment to say that we do not agree with or cannot get along with that country now (presuming the same people aren't still in charge, which actually doesn't seem to matter either). America has it's own dark blotches on the record in our dealings with 'the natives', of course slavery, and things like the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese immigrants and their American born families during WWII. Admitting these things should not make us less ennobled to participate in the great ideas that this country has inspired and founded itself upon.
I concede it is a struggle to get people to be comfortable with the idea that the comforts and power they have now may be because thousands of innocents were slaughtered and abused. Germany certainly has a collective stain on its conscience that will not easily wash off, and it is one that should not. It's probably a good thing that blood is not so easy to clean off once it's on our hands. It reminds us that there are lines that we cannot cross and still keep our humanity.
But to pretend that those lines were never crossed by people of our heritage, our ilk, or our kin, is a crime of another sort. Turkey has to come to grips with the idea that it's past includes shameful deeds right along side everyone else, to go with items of national pride and dignity. This fact reminds us that nations are born of men (and women, all of us are guilty) and their often weaker ideals. The ones we try to avoid but will so often find in our darkest times a solace in those darker lessons we've almost forgotten.