Community Commentary:

I did some more research recently about Armenian history, adding to information I’ve picked up since 1972. Infoplease.com has articles on the rise and falls of Armenia. Google “Armenian Genocide,” and you’ll also find, among other things, a lengthy, exhaustively documented Wikipedia article describing the Ottoman Turks’ campaign of discrimination against, and random murder of, Armenians even before the massacre — interesting reading that I recommend highly.

According to the Wikipedia article, the Turkish government’s official excuse for the execution of Armenian intellectuals at Van on April 24, 1915, and the march across the desert, was the suspicion that the Armenians were working with the Russians to defeat what was left of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Also interesting reading are the “About Us” pages on both the Armenian National Committee’s and the Armenian Youth Federation’s Websites. These mission statements, advocating an effort to reclaim Armenia’s traditional lands, make the non-assimilation clause in the federation’s scholarship application (which set off Kimber’s criticism) entirely understandable.

Presumably they’ll need people to repopulate the reclaimed territories. So much for anyone who thought the policy had outlived its usefulness.

Kimber wasn’t denouncing the entire immigrant community, Armenian or otherwise, just those who waste their American experience by staying isolated in their own communities to the extent of failing, or refusing, to learn English. These people sound too much like civilian employees of the U.S. military who spend 20 years in a foreign post but never go downtown.

When I have my own column, I’ll expand on all that. Nowhere in any of Kimber’s columns have I seen him deny that the Armenian Genocide happened. Plenty of deniers exist, of course, not least the succession of post-Ottoman Turkish governments. At least one regime excused the march across the desert as a “relocation.” Right.

Like the relocation the American government under Andrew Jackson imposed on five American Indian tribes, from their traditional lands in the Southeast to what became Oklahoma in the 1830s. So many of them died on the way on the route that became known as the Trail of Tears.