Edward Burke Peace And Reconciliation Summary

In 1776, Edward Burke, a British MP, gave a speech in the British parliament, in which he summed to his fellow MPs, his view towards Britain's stance of the American colonies. Burke not only sympathized with American grievances, but he tried to convince his fellows of their legitimacy.
As hostilities drove toward war, Burke strove toward reconciliation, and in a dramatic speech to the House of Commons, he presented a plan to “conciliate and concede” to America without making Britain appear spine-less and defeated. Though Burke's plan was rejected, the prospects of peace and reconciliation went far than expected. The acts of war ended in 1776 and this was followed by the Declaration of Independence. Similarly, in the second half of the 1980s, the former Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev made an attempts to reconcile with Japan. Russia and Japan had disagreements over different economic and territorial issues that lasted unresolved as early as the 1950s. He, however, failed and may be

this is due to the little efforts he made.
As Hi (2009) argues, this dynamic continued in the postwar period, up to the present, as Chinese elites have instrumentally referred to wartime injustices so as to advance domestic and/or international political aims. For example, during the early years of Communist rule, in the 1950s, Chinese ruling elites sought to de-emphasize Japanese war crimes in order to improve bilateral relations. The ultimate goal was to counteract American influence in the region through Japan’s recognition of the Communist regime. By attributing Japanese war crimes to a small number of military officers, Chinese elites were able to mount what Hi (2009) describes as a “people’s diplomacy,” where both the Chinese and ordinary Japanese citizens were victims of Japanese militarism. As Hi (2009) argues, Chinese elites’ views of Japanese militarism converged with that of Japan’s conservative leadership, who were anxious to assign wartime behavior to a few.
After the Armenian genocide of World War I, outside forces, specifically the British, and victim groups were unable to conclusively settle the issues with Turkish nationalists. After the war, Turkish nationalists resisted British investigations into the Armenian genocide, in part because they viewed such investigations as threats to the nationalist movement itself. The British occupied Istanbul and tried unsuccessfully to arrest and prosecute Turkish officials responsible for the massacres. Their efforts were severely hampered by Turkish officials who “destroyed the evidence of their killing, burning incriminating documents as well as their victims’ bodies” (Oren, 2007: 39). The Turkish Parliament also ignored the murders, mostly because it “was mired in debates over who had suffered most acutely in the war, Christians or Muslims” (ibid.).
At the Lausanne Conference in 1923, which established Turkey’s permanent borders, “the Armenian massacres were not even mentioned, nor were the Armenians allowed to take part” (ibid.). In the nearly ninety-five years since, Turkish officials have steadfastly denied the genocide.
In 2009 in Cairo University, the American president Barack Obama (henceforth, Obama) addressed the Muslim nations in order to launch a reconciliation with Muslims and Arabs. Though there has been much criticism and controversy over Obama's speech, it however had its own significance. Obama wanted to turn a new page with the Arab and Muslim world following the well-known policies taken by the previous American administrations towards this area in general and towards its crises and issues in particular. On the other hand, as late as the mid-1970s, the Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat (henceforth, Sadat) addressed the Israeli Knesset following the 1973 war between Israel and some Arab nations, including Egypt. Both presidents gave speeches during critical and controversial moments in the course of their own respective audiences. This study sheds light on political reconciliation as a means of mediation between disagreed or different parties by comparing the reconciliatory discourse in the speeches of two presidents. Both speeches will be critically tackled using van Dijk's (1995) self-other presentation. In addition, the semantic and pragmatic aspects of these speeches will be treated in terms of text analysis and meaning decoding.
In its most general sense, reconciliation refers to a condition of nonviolent, mutually acceptable coexistence where former enemies come to re-envision one another as fellow citizens. Reconciliation debates often center on the appropriateness of trials, truth commissions, lustration (purges), official apologies, memorials, reparations, amnesties, and other institutions and policies to address the past. Where violence was between countries (such as between Japan and the Koreas), reconciliation normally refers to reestablishing social, political, and economic relations among erstwhile adversaries (Abdel-Noor, 2013:30). On occasion, it is misleading to speak of reconciliation, since there is no prior morally acceptable condition to which to return (indeed, South Africa is illustrative—it is hardly the case that relations between white colonists and black Africans were ever particularly just), but the term continues to be used to deal with post-violence relations.
Reconciliation is defined as the re-establishment of friendly or cordial relations between two or more parties, usually following a certain conflict, struggle or war. It aims at the neutralization of any previous or past disagreements or discords. MWCD* (2004:1040) defined reconciliation as ''the act of causing two people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement.''
The term ‘reconciliation’ is used to refer either to a process or to an outcome or goal. Reconciliation, as an outcome, is an improvement in the relations among parties formerly at odds with one another. The nature and degree of improvement required to qualify as reconciliation for any particular context is a matter of disagreement among theorists.
So too, the reasons why relations have improved may play a role in determining whether reconciliation has genuinely taken place. That is, on some accounts, two parties will count as reconciled only if their better future relations result from their having satisfactorily dealt with the emotional, epistemic, and/or material legacy of the past. While the outcome of reconciliation is oriented toward a future marked by peaceful and just relations, the processes of reconciliation are typically oriented towards the continuing bad feelings, suspicions, or harms that were created by the conflicts and injustices of the past.
Processes of reconciliation are designed to contribute to the improvement of relationships damaged as a result of wrongdoing. A wide range of such processes is examined in the literature. One that is brought up, more often in the context of objections to reconciliation rather than defenses, is forgetting (Hughes, 2001 and Bhargava 2012). Since the past cannot be changed, wrongdoing cannot be undone. Therefore, one might argue, the only way to overcome a painful past is to suppress the memory of it. Policies of forgetting in the name of reconciliation have been pursued by a number of states in recent decades, including Cambodia, whose prime minister advised his fellow citizens in 1999 “to dig a hole and bury the past,” while granting amnesty from prosecution to Khmer Rouge leaders (Chandler, 2003:310). However, those theorists who defend the political and moral value of reconciliation more often reject the claim that reconciliation requires forgetting.

Instead, these defenders generally claim that knowledge and acknowledgement of wrongdoing, as well as recognition of the victims, are crucial to successful reconciliation.

Especially in political contexts, knowledge of basic facts is critical because often victims and the broader political community do now know who was responsible for the wrong suffered, nor the extent of violations committed. Acknowledgement refers to the official, public recognition of what happened. This is often needed to counter official denial of wrongdoing or responsibility for wrongdoing. The often unspoken, Freudian assumption is that suppressed traumas will inevitably re-emerge in destructive ways. The more explicit arguments are that the acknowledgement of wrongs and of victims helps heal psychic wounds (van Ness and Strong, 2002), enable re-establish normative standards for behavior , and reassert that the victims are indeed members of the moral or political community (Llewellyn and Howse,

1999).
As will be discussed below, while there is wide agreement that the processes of reconciliation must acknowledge the wrongs of the past and the proper standing of victims, theorists debate precisely how such acknowledgements are best communicated, so that they will be sufficiently credible and effective in improving future relations.
There is also ongoing debate in the political realm about which wrongs must be acknowledged and redressed. Violations of civil and political rights have historically been the focus of both theory and practice, but increasingly scholars argue for the importance of addressing violations of economic and cultural rights (Mamdani, 2000). Theorists also disagree about what else, besides acknowledgement, must be achieved in order for reconciliation to be either likely or warranted. Must material forms of harm be redressed? Must retributive justice be achieved? Must the parties forgive? Disagreements about identifying necessary or appropriate processes are typically connected to the issue of the last section: disagreements about what degree of improvement in relations can reasonably be pursued in the aftermath of wrongdoing. Finally, there is debate about who should decide which process of reconciliation is adopted in a given context. In the political context, this is in response to calls for greater local agency and decision-making (McEvoy, 2007).