You can’t rewrite history

Dear George Bush,

The continued presence of your military in Iraq is a sensitive issue for many reasons.  Not only do you have to contend with the violence aimed at your troops from within the country, nations surrounding Iraq have a key role to play in your efforts as well.  This goes a long way to explaining why you attempted to rewrite history yesterday by declaring that the death of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during WWI was not genocide.  Thankfully, Congress disagreed.

Your argument was that passing a Bill in support of the term ‘genocide’ “would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror”.  That maybe true, but doesn’t it disturb you that rather than honestly pursue the truth you would prefer to have the history books record a false version of events to keep the Turkish President on your side?  The prospect of rewriting history for your own purposes is unacceptable.  It reminds me of the terrible fate of Rwanda, where millions of people were left to be slaughtered because the UN discussions (dominated by the US) decided that if it was classed as genocide, they’d have to do something about it - so you took the easy way out and decided it wasn’t genocide and let the slaughter continue unabated.  Having also tried to rewrite history on the subject of how the Iraq war began, it is quite clear that your regard for the truth, honesty and integrity is pretty minimal and will only be adhered to if it suits your purposes.  Admittedly your best mate Tony also tried to rewrite history recently when he blocked an investigation into corrupt arms deals with Saudi Arabia, but that hardly exonerates you.

I don’t care if the Turkish President is unhappy about all this and I don’t care if the strategic use of Turkey becomes more difficult in future.  You simply cannot behave like this and expect to get away with it.

Yours angrily,

A.Tory