For Fourth Year in a Row, Obama Breaks Campaign Promise to Call the Century-Old Armenian Genocide a "Genocide"
From Jake Tapper over at ABC News:
As a senator, and then as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama often talked about how bold he was to call the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire just what it was: a genocide.
"America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides," he said. "I intend to be that president." In a January 2008 letter to the Armenian Reporter, Mr. Obama said he shared "with Armenian Americans — so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors — a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history."
In 2006, Mr. Obama noted, "I criticized the secretary of state [Condoleezza Rice] for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans, after he properly used the term 'genocide' to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence."
Asserted Mr. Obama, back then: "The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy."
That was then, this is now.
Whole thing here.
I wrote about the fact-avoiding broken pledge in 2009 and 2011, and about G-word politics for the L.A. Times in 2007. Go ahead, re-watch the president's foreign policy bestie Samantha Power give her sincere plea to the Armenian-American community back in 2008:
