Ambassador John Evans is gone...

US Ambassador Evans left Yerevan on Saturday night - one year early. As followers of this blog know, he was fired for speaking openly about the Armenian Genocide. I worked at USAID for 2 years, during both Ambassador Ordway and Evans' terms, and watched the verbal acrobatics as Ordway avoided saying the "g" word in public, even during 15 minute answers about questions about genocide recognition. Ambassador Evans couldn't do it. He couldn't face genocide survivors and their descendants and play word games with them. He knew he could lose his job for it, and he did it anyway. I have so much respect for him, I just can't express it. If people just did the right thing, instead of playing these ridiculous games and calling it "realpolitic", the world would be a better place. I tell you, this entire massive threat of terrorism would not exist if the US would be a fair and evenhanded player in the region, instead of supporting terrorist states like Israel and Turkey, while lecturing Arabs and Iran about democracy. When you support a country (Israel) that is constantly bulldozing Arab homes and building Jewish homes on their land, when you support a country carte blanche which is suppressing an entire people and keeping countless Palestinians as refugees in other countries (Jordan and Lebanon especially) you are creating entire generations of really pissed off people, people who feel completely powerless, completely screwed, both by Israel AND the US. This is how you create people who strap bombs to themselves and blow up themselves AND innocent people. It usually does not happen by accident, and I just wish the US government would learn, and just do the right thing.

Ambassador Evans now joins Ambassador Morgenthau on the list of people who have earned the love and respect of the Armenian nation.

He's gone, and now we look stuck with this Hoagland who obviously is going to toe the State Department line. How sad...