Angela Bacca

When America voted in a Democratic Congress in the mid-term elections, a sigh of relief could be heard all over the world. Finally, Americans are taking the right step to understand our global position.

Sadly, our so-called Democrat Congress has been a major disappointment. We elected these legislators under the assumption that they would do all they could to overcome the mistakes of the failing Bush Administration.

So far, they still haven’t approved a timeline for withdrawal in Iraq, they haven’t passed legislation to lower America’s carbon emissions, they haven’t fixed our healthcare, they aren’t even able to uphold our supposed separation of church and state.

So what have they been doing? They have been working diligently to bring to light the human rights violations of a current ally for past transgressions.

Lately Congress has been pushing to approve a resolution recognizing the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by the Turks of the dying Ottoman Empire.

Genocide is one of the most demented manifestations of human society. Recognizing this genocide would be an overdue validation for Armenians, but it’s hypocritical for our government to spend its time recognizing a 90-year-old genocide across the world when we haven’t even recognized our own country’s genocide of the Native American people or black enslavement.

Even President Bush is making sense on this issue. Wednesday morning, Bush scolded Congress harshly, saying, “One thing the Congress should not be doing is sorting out the history of the Ottoman Empire… Congress has more important work to do than antagonizing an important democratic ally in the Muslim World.”

Bush is right: our Congress does have more important work to do, like getting us out of one of the most financially draining military entanglements in American history. Our activity in the Middle East is a mounting blow for our economy.

Turkey, which has been petitioning to become a member of the European Union (EU), could be hindered in its application process by a resolution recognizing this genocide, the perpetrators of which are long dead. The European Union has strict standards as far as its member states and human rights violations.

We have no reason to further complicate our relations in the Middle East, and creating tension with Turkey is just plain stupid.

It is clear that our Democratic congress was elected on the mere principal that they weren’t Republican, but they are proving to be inefficient. The Democrats we elected into Congress need to step up their game and show us they are more than just “not Republican,” they need to do what we elected them to do: be a voice of the people in a democracy.