ARMENIAN BETRAYAL
Worcester Telegram
NEWS/100319996/1020
March 10 2010
AM
Two years ago, then Sen. Barack Obama urged Congress to pass the
Armenian Genocide Resolution and pledged that, if elected president,
he would recognize the genocide. This week, President Obama struck
a deal with Congressional leaders not to schedule a vote on the
resolution, which recently passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
While we understand the geopolitical reasons behind the decision, Mr.
Obama’s about-face on this issue breaks a campaign promise and
continues the long-standing failure on the part of U.S. presidents
to hold Turkey to a full accounting with its past crimes.
The excuse this time around is that Turkey and Armenia are at a
critical stage in their rapprochement, and need only a bit more time.
Those who oppose the House resolution say that historians should
decide how to characterize what happened to 1.5 million Armenians
killed between 1915 and the early 1920s.
The reality is that Turkey will never fully come to terms with its
Ottoman past, nor can it have a relationship with Armenia that is
grounded in mutual respect, so long as key allies such as the United
States continue to abet the fiction that what happened then was
anything other than a genocide.
Armenian immigration to the U.S. was spurred by that genocide –
and Massachusetts today counts Watertown, Belmont, Whitinsville and
Worcester as among communities with sizeable numbers of people of
Armenian ancestry. The administration owes the remaining survivors of
the Armenian Genocide, their families, and Armenian communities across
this nation clear and unflinching support for the House resolution.
Whatever the cost to Turkish-American relations in the short term,
those relations will be stronger in the years ahead if they are
grounded in the recognition of hard historical truths.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
