Thank you!

Published: Saturday October 13, 2007

On Wednesday, October 10, the House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted the Armenian Genocide resolution and agreed to refer it to the full House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House has pledged to schedule a vote soon.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Tom Lantos, and the members of the committee who voted in favor of the resolution resisted an enormous amount of pressure from the White House and the military-diplomatic establishment.

Hours before the vote, President George W. Bush appeared on the South Lawn of the White House to urge the members to vote no. He called members of the committee personally, as did the secretaries of state and defense and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet the House leadership stood firm. We are proud of Speaker Pelosi and grateful to her for refusing to bend to this pressure.

Mr. Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, scheduled a vote for Wednesday. In his opening remarks, he called the vote "a vote of conscience." He voted in favor of the resolution. He has our respect and our gratitude.

A bipartisan majority of the members of the committee spoke eloquently in favor of the resolution and voted yes. The vote was 27 to 21.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D.-Calif.) hit the nail on the head when he told the committee, "We cannot provide genocide denial as one of the perks of friendship with the United States."

He, along with Rep. Ed Royce (R.-Calif.) led the effort to pass the resolution in the committee. Mr. Royce argued passionately that "as a global leader in human rights, it is imperative for the United States to stand on principle and recognize the annihilation of the Armenians as genocide."

A fellow Republican from California, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, took strong objection to "the audacity that some Turks have had during this debate to threaten to cut logistics support of U. S. troops in Iraq.

"Isn't it enough that hundreds of our servicemembers may have died due to Turkish refusal to permit the 4th Infantry Division to transit through Turkey and enter Iraq at the beginning of the Iraq conflict?" Mr. Rohrbacher asked. "Isn't that enough?

We are also grateful to Reps. Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.) and George Radanovich (R.-Calif.), the original cosponsors of the resolutions, Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D.-N.J.) and Joe Knollenberg (R.-Mich.), the cochairs of the House Armenian Caucus, and Rep. Anna Eshoo (R.-Calif.), an Armenian-American, for the leadership they provided in this matter.

The Armenian-American lobby in Washington worked hard to usher the resolution through the committee in the face of fierce, extremely well-funded and powerful opposition. The lobby has done us proud, and we are grateful to our activists. The lobby is, of course, all of us, and so we are saying thank you to everyone who took the time to speak up, to organize, to articulate, and to donate.

Of course, there's more to do. And it's urgent.

We need to call each member who voted yes, and say Thank you. We need to call cosponsors of the resolution and say Thank you. And we need to call members who are not cosponsors and urge them to vote yes when the resolution comes to the floor.

The best way to find out who is a cosponsor is to go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and type "H.Res.106" in the search box. Select the "Bill number" button before clicking "Search."

Speaker Pelosi could schedule the vote any day, so it is important to act now, without delay.

Passage of the resolution by the House is in sight. We cannot waver now.