"....Of course, the Armenian genocide resolution was introduced to bash Turkey, not to teach history. The Armenian lobby hoped to use the U.S. Congress as its club. In seeking to advance its agenda, the lobby exhibited an almost frivolous disregard for the impact on U.S. foreign policy. Only when the magnitude of the threat to U.S.-Turkish relations become too obvious for even a hermit to miss did the House Democratic leadership sideline the resolution. Whether Congress should have yielded to Turkish pressure after making the measure a priority is an open question. But on its merits the resolution should never have come up."
More:Interest Group Foreign Policy - by Doug Bandow