OUR VIEW: PRESIDENT WRONG TO BACKTRACK ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Merced Sun-Star
2896.html
March 23 2009
California

It’s a dreary and familiar script.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama voiced vigorous
support for official American recognition of the Armenian genocide.

Now, like a series of presidents before him, he has bowed to
geopolitical concerns — real or imagined — and backed off that
stance.

Maybe it’s only temporary. Maybe Obama is waiting until after his
upcoming trip to Turkey, so as not to embarrass his Turkish hosts on
a matter that’s anathema to them.

The Turkish foreign minister warned in a TV interview last week that
Obama’s visit didn’t preclude a genocide declaration at some point.

Let’s hope so. But it’s also possible that Obama is just the latest
president to backtrack on this issue once in office. That would be
a major disappointment to millions of Armenians, Armenian-Americans
and others who support recognition because it is the right thing to
do for the sake of history, justice and truth.

Turkey does indeed occupy a strategically vital spot in the Middle
East. It is a NATO ally and in a position to aid the U.S. in its
dealings with Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. But waffling on the genocide
issue is no guarantee that the Turks will support every U.S endeavor.

Ask the Bush administration: Before taking office, President Bush
pledged support for genocide recognition. He pulled back when Turkey
became a strategic conduit for U.S. actions after the invasion of
Iraq. His reward was to see the Turks forbid passage of American
forces through their country into northern Iraq.

The facts are clear: About 1.5 million Armenians were deported,
starved and murdered by the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century’s
first planned and organized genocide. The modern Turkish republic is
not guilty of those crimes, nor are today’s Turkish people.

Yet they remain intensely sensitive to any suggestion that they own
up to their own history.

And generations of State Department experts and paid lobbyists
are willing to abet them in that intransigence. Now add the Obama
administration to that list.

Official recognition of the genocide will come some day, just as
surely as history has already made its judgment. But when?