BAM’S GENOCIDE DODGE

The New York Post
April 25, 2009

It was presidential candidate Barack Obama who last fall loudly
declared that quot;America deserves a president who speaks truthfully
about the Armenian genocidequot; – promising, quot;I will be that
president.quot;

He even wrote then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blasting
the recall of an ambassador to Turkey who’d used the term
quot;genocidequot; to describe the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians
under the Ottoman Empire.

The Turks, not surprisingly, blame the deaths on fighting during
World War I.

But, as candidate Obama wrote: quot;The occurrence of the Armenian
genocide in 1915 is not an ‘allegation,’ a ‘personal opinion’ or a
‘point of view.’ Supported by overwhelming evidence, it is a widely
documented fact.quot;

Well, that was then.

Yesterday, President Obama released the annual White House statement
for Armenian Remembrance Day, which commemorates the atrocity. And
nowhere in that statement does the word quot;genocidequot; appear.

Just as he very pointedly refused to use the word earlier this month
during a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

quot;I want to focus not on my views right now, but on the views of
the Turkish and Armenian peoplequot; as the two nations hold talks,
he said then.

In yesterday’s statement, Obama issued a bland call to re-examine
the past, quot;so that it can better be understood.quot;

So much for America deserving quot;a president who speaks truthfully
about the Armenian genocide.quot;

Obviously, the president does not want to do anything that would
alienate Turkey, whose good will and active cooperation Washington
sees as critical to US interests in the Middle East.

So is Obama a hypocrite? Maybe so.

But it’s a telling lesson that actually being president is a lot more
complicated than running for the job.