JPost: Obama’s non-recognition of Genocide fear of provoking Turkish tyrant

PanARMENIAN.Net - A powerful case in point of the U.S. president’s refusal to identify evil is his broken promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the 100th anniversary of which is this month, Shmuley Boteach states in an article published at The Jerusalem Post.

“Last Sunday, Pope Francis showed moral courage in openly calling for recognition of “the first genocide of the twentieth century.” Turkey, run by the increasingly brutal dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, immediately recalled its ambassador, as befits a bully. Why won’t President Obama recognize the genocide, especially since he promised as a presidential candidate that he would do so? CNN’s chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper captured the president’s failure succinctly: “For the sixth year in a row President Barack Obama has broken his promise to the Armenian community, made when seeking their votes as a senator and a presidential candidate, to use the word ‘genocide’ to describe the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. He did this in deference to the government of Turkey, which – historical revisionism aside – the Obama administration regards as a more crucial ally.”

President Obama won’t recognize the genocide of the Armenian people for fear of provoking the Turkish tyrant,” the article says.

“The president’s emphatic promise that he would recognize the Armenian Genocide followed by six years of broken promises and obfuscation. But the best part is this: President Obama won’t even acknowledge having broken his commitment. On the contrary, he does verbal somersaults to show that he has honored it, as he did in April of 2009: “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed. My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”

And yet, all it would take to acknowledge those “facts” is to simply use the word “genocide” to describe the Armenian slaughter. Just one presidential speech would do it. But Obama steadfastly refuses to do so,” the article said.

“In the final analysis, it was President Obama himself who said in 2008 that “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that president.”

Intentions are meaningless. Action is everything.

Keep your word, Mr. President. More than 1.5 million victims are waiting,” the author of the article concludes.