Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Erdogan's BFF Obama again avoids calling 1915 Armenian killings 'genocide'.


Erdogan's BFF Obama again avoids calling 1915 Armenian killings 'genocide'. (AP).

President Hussein Obama will once again stop short of calling the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide, prompting anger and disappointment from those who have been pushing him to fulfill a campaign promise and use the politically fraught term on the 100th anniversary of the killings this week. Officials decided against it after opposition from some at the State Department and the Pentagon.

After more than a week of internal debate, top administration officials discussed the final decision with Armenian-American leaders Tuesday before making it public. The White House said the officials pledged that the U.S. would use Friday's centennial anniversary "to urge a full, frank and just acknowledgement of the facts." That language echoed the administration's five previous statements on the anniversary, as well as those of previous administrations. But it did not use the word "genocide," as many had hoped.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama did describe the killings of Armenians as "genocide" and said the U.S. government had a responsibility to recognize it as such. As a candidate in January 2008, Obama had pledged to recognize the genocide and at least one of his campaign surrogates, the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, recorded a nearly five-minute video at the time imploring Armenian-Americans to vote for Obama precisely because he would keep his word on the issue.

Other officials at the White House and State Department who deal more directly with human rights issues, including Power, wanted the president to use the word "genocide," the officials said.
Asked if there was an internal rift on the issue, one senior official involved in the discussion said simply "yes."

That official noted that alienating the Turks at this point in Obama's presidency would mean accepting that the U.S. investment in good relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had failed. That relationship has been fraught with difficulty in recent years over human rights concerns, among other issues.

Another senior U.S. official acknowledged the decision would be a disappointment to some who were "hoping to hear different language this year" and said the administration understood that perspective. But, the official also said the administration believed its approach is right "both for acknowledging the past, and for our ability to work with regional partners to save lives in the present."

Negative reaction to the announcement was intense from both the Armenian-American community and members of Congress who have championed the Armenian cause.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said he was "deeply disappointed" by the president's decision.

"The United States has long prided itself for being a beacon of human rights, for speaking out against atrocity, for confronting painful chapters of its own past and that of others," said Schiff. "This cannot be squared with a policy of complicity in genocide denial by the president or Congress."

The head of one of the Armenian-American groups briefed on the decision by White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes went further.

"President Obama's surrender to Turkey represents a national disgrace," said Ken Hachikian, the chairman of the Armenian National Council of America. "It is, very simply, a betrayal of truth, a betrayal of trust." Hmmmmm.......Sorry but he's just a pathological liar, and won't upset his 'Islamist brother'.




Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...