Over the centuries, millions upon millions of men, women, and children have perished because
 of religious, political, and racial indifferences.  When I was drafted into the U.S. Army during
 WW II, I became known as an "enlisted man."  As with the majority of the 16,353,659 who served 
during that period, most of us were not volunteers in the true sense of the word.  It was a choice 
between enlisting or stigmatizing your entire family by becoming known as a "conscientious objector."
    
     Fact is, most of us didn't have a clue as to how high the stakes were until we became a 
part of the actual fighting.  Needless to say, we went from being semi-innocent young adults to 
very mature battle-hardened veterans in less time than it took to change a flat tire during a 
very promising Saturday night date.  Not only that, but we also had to bear witness to the 
enormous suffering and deprivation that the war was causing among those whose cities, towns, 
and villages we were laying waste to in the process of liberation.  And as if that weren't 
enough, besides losing many buddies along the way, we also got to see and smell the remaining 
survivors of extermination camps along with the charred and stinking remains of the countless 
dead victims that the Nazis left behind.  

    Yet with all that, we never had the time to bask in the sun and enjoy the status of being 
liberators.  The rear echelon troops enjoyed that privilege.  We had a war to win and the most 
important thing that mattered was to get through the next engagement alive and, if God allowed, 
to get back home and to our loved ones in one piece.

      As with others in my generation who grew up in an Armenian family, I used to hear my 
parents talking about the Armenian Genocide.  As an offspring of parents who had suffered and 
lost family members and relatives during the genocide, I was indirectly aware of what my 
parents went through at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.  But regardless of how graphically 
or descriptively I became aware of it, my experiences in the war later taught me that I could 
not comprehend the pain and depravity it inflicted on those who survived it.  They were all 
permanently scarred with the ever-present images and memory of their mutilated and martyred 
loved ones--a specter that they carried with them for the rest of their living days. 

    As for many of the present-day descendants of the sadistic Ottoman butchers who committed 
these atrocities, most likely they are not of the same cut as their ancestors, but not wanting 
to carry the burden of their past, they try to absolve themselves of responsibility by accepting 
the fabricated denials of their Turkish government with the same hope that time and denial will 
eventually cleanse their nation of all wrongdoing.

    And how about all those Godfearing people on our side, who held high political positions 
in the supposedly friendly nations during that period---or for that matter, those who hold such 
high positions today.  How are they absolving themselves of all wrongdoing?  Is their present-day 
reluctance to accept the reality of the Armenian Genocide out of ignorance or out of bottom-line 
diplomacy?  Does their heartless attitude stem from the fact that the screams of hapless women being 
raped and dismembered can no longer be heard or because innocent Armenian children are no longer 
being slaughtered for sport, or because seventy-three years of time has deodorized the stench of 
the thousands upon thousands of victims who were left to rot in the desert sun or in the rivers 
and streams or along the sides of all the hundreds of death trails over which the ruthless 
Ottomans were herding their helpless victims?  Does the absence of all these horrible but 
well-documented events give them the right to accept Turkey's futile denials and to adopt bottom-lined 
diplomacy for the sake of material gain or geopolitical advantage? 

    No matter how Godfearing and uprighteous these people make themselves out to be, in the 
eyes of God or in the eyes of the nations who have already accepted the Armenian Genocide of 
1915 as part of their historical archives, these unconscionable people are not only making 
their nation but also the unwitting followers they represent, accessories after the fact.  
Feigned denial or feigned ignorance for material or political advantage makes a nation that 
supports such a nation, a party to the same criminal act.

    In truth, there is nothing in the world that can justify the 1915 Genocide of our Armenian 
people by the Ottoman Turks--a genocide so horrible, that it included such things as the rape 
and disemboweling of pregnant women, the rape and slaughter of females from age five to 
eighty-five, the sodomy and slaughter of young boys, the mock crucifixions of naked women, 
forced death marches across deserts without food or water (thousands died during these death 
marches and of the few that survived, it is said that they had to drink their own urine 
in order to survive).  And when the dust finally settled in 1923, those despotic bastards 
had ravaged, mutilated, and destroyed 1,500,000 innocent Armenian lives.

    I would like to ask those who hold high offices in their respective governments and 
who know better but support Turkey's denial for material or political advantage, or to 
put it into a more proper perspective, those unfortunate dregs of humanity who know better 
but who are willing to sell their souls for forty pieces of silver, how in hell do they 
live with themselves?

    For the readers who are wondering what motivated me into writing this commentary, here's 
how it happened: I had just finished reading Peter Balakian's "Black Dog of Fate," a book 
which I would highly recommend as required reading for all people of all ages from puberty 
to demise.  And the day after I finished Balakian's book, I went to see Stephen Spielberg's 
"Saving Private Ryan."

    If Spielberg were to take Balakian's "Black Dog of Fate" and portray some of the 
Armenian Genocide that Peter Balakian describes in his book as realistically as he 
portrayed the horrors of WW II, those world leaders who practice bottom-line diplomacy 
and sacrifice lives as readily as pawns in a chess game, might start thinking more like 
the human beings they make themselves out to be.

    In conclusion, I would like to say that if the past bottom-line diplomats of our 
1915 world had properly acknowledged and properly dealt with the Ottoman Turks who
perpetrated the genocide of our people, this century of ours may not have turned out 
to be the bloodiest in history.  What's more, it may not have been necessary to save Private Ryan.

                        Joseph Vosbikian