I was bored the other day, daydreaming about more ways that our government could create some new enemies, when a brilliant idea came to me. Why don’t we dig up some of the most unpleasant memories in the modern history of our most important Middle Eastern ally, Turkey, and drag their nearly century-old wrongdoings back through the mud at one of the most critical junctures in U.S. foreign policy history, ignoring the threats of permanently strained relations from their generals in the process? Well, they must be reading my thoughts down there in Washington, D.C., because sure enough, Congress went and stole my idea.

When I first read of this news, I was furious, not because anyone actually likes us very much in the Middle East these days short of our good friends, the Saudis. But for a while there, Turkey was at least willing to be drawn on the same map as us.

Continued instability in the northern region of Iraq in the post-Saddam era has drawn the ire of the Turkish government who is now voicing its dissatisfaction with the United States’ lenient approach to the Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Recently, attacks from a particular Kurdish rebel group based in northern Iraq, the PKK, on Turkish soldiers have led to talk of a Turkish military incursion into Northern Iraq citing Americas inability to guarantee them security, something that Washington would rather not have to deal with.

But despite all that, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi felt that we hadn’t quite irked the Turks as much as we possibly could.

She thought that now would be the most opportune time to come out and say to the people of Turkey, ‘By the way, right now, 90 years later, you are going to take responsibility for the actions of a regime most of you were never alive to even remember. This concludes the reaffirmation of our moral superiority, just in case you thought our two countries were on an even playing field.’

There exists resounding and irrefutable evidence supporting the conclusion that a mass-genocide was perpetrated on the Armenian population by the Turkish regime between 1915 to 1917. There’s even a Wikipedia article aptly named ‘The Armenian Genocide.’ No one in tune with the actual facts of history denies these horrific events occurred. Certainly, I’m in no way insinuating that this didn’t happen.

What I am insinuating is that a non-binding resolution from the United States Congress on this matter is not a wise foreign policy decision at this time.

Turkey’s assistance on both the military and intelligence fronts of the war in Iraq are vital to any sort of winning campaign that may still yet ensue. Turkey’s supportive voice on the world stage is vital in the fight being waged on America’s image in the media. And the fact that we feel the need to blame an entire population for a regime that many of their grandparents died to overthrow despite these obvious consequences serves as an example of poor politics.

I wonder who made America the voice of the world that gets to say, ‘What you did was wrong, we condemn it, you should be ashamed; anytime you’d like to apologize, we’ll be here.’ That’s basically all a non-binding resolution does. No action is taken, no sanctions, no anything. Simply, it is legislation being passed in this case for the sake of wagging our finger at someone else.

That we feel as though we in America are in a position to be the judges, or worse, the writers of history, might explain why everyone outside the States is so angry. Until we decide to step off our high and mighty, our image throughout the world will continue to suffer.

Unfortunately, with the current set of elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum, this seems very unlikely.