Turks, Armenians, Russians, Kurds, and others were engaged in all-out war whose outcome was starvation, exposure, and disease with no ethnic boundaries. The Armenian revolutionaries who fled to Western Europe after the demise of their plans for an Armenian state threw the blame on Turks rather than admitting their part in the disaster. Western nations, eager to justify a negative view of an old enemy, accepted this version of history uncritically. The aggressive rhetoric of this resolution requires some balance and correction. I offer as an appendix the statement made at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives last fall by Professor of History Dr. Justin McCarthy regarding House Resolution 398, which resembled the current HJR3.
Historians disagree on many points.
Information is still being uncovered in the Ottoman and Soviet archives that may shed some light on the course of events. An open discussion of evidence from the past will help clarify what transpired. But history is not a matter for our elected officials to decide. Let's compare the wartime deportation of Armenians by the beleaguered Ottoman government to something closer to home. Thousands of Cherokee died on that march.