Obama Never Really Planned to Keep His Promise About Recognizing the Armenian Genocide

"Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State 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. … as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide." — Barack Obama on the Importance of US-Armenia Relations" There you have it – in black and white. President Obama’s own words. A promise. A declaration. To date, however, after being in office for almost eight full years, Barack Obama has not honored his promise to “recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

Over twenty nations across the globe have recognized the mass killing of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks as genocide. The most recent country to do so – this very year – was Germany. But not the United States! Not two months ago, in fact, on April 22, 2016, in a statement Obama released on Armenian Remembrance Day, he said, “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view has not changed.” No? OK, but what does that have to do with his initial promise? Nothing! Not a damn thing. The fact remains that he reneged on his promise! Nothing will whitewash that fact. Obama’s slick use of words about his view not having changed in regard to what occurred during the Armenian genocide fools no one. Placates no one. All it does, in fact, is remind one of Bill Clinton’s slippery way with words (i.e., Clinton, arguing that his statement that "there's nothing going on between us" had been truthful due to the fact that he was not in a relationship with Monica Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, said, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is”) using his lawyerly skills in an attempt to wiggle out of facing the truth. Admitting the truth. And the truth here is that Obama made a promise, and he has not kept that promise. He lied. Period! Some may say a lie is a lie is a lie. That is, they may not see some lies as greater than others. Such individuals may look askance at those who claim that they “only” told a so-called “white lie” versus a lie that was replete with deceit, hurtful, harmful, despicable. In this case I will beg to differ with such purists. In Obama’s case, he trafficked in a lie that tears at the very heart and soul of Armenian men and women who lost loved ones – grandfathers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, great grandfathers, great aunts and uncles, second and third cousins – in a series of horrific actions that constituted genocide perpetrated by Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish militias that not only turn the stomach but should sicken all of humanity.

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Innocent civilians – women, young children, infants, and the elderly – were forced out into desolate deserts on death marches, where they perished from dehydration, starvation and death at the hands “of killers specifically organized for the purpose of slaughtering the Armenians.” Armenian children were purposely butchered -- literally butchered: they were disemboweled; had their eyes gouged out, with knives and swords in front of their parents and siblings; and suffered gang rape. Young girls and boys were ripped from their parents and sold into sexual slavery and became the chattel of the perpetrators. And why? For no other reason than the butchers’ perverted pleasure and intent to increase the horror and suffering of millions who had already suffered enormously. It seems that President Obama used this genocide, comprised of thousands of horrific and dastardly incidents that left the victims bereft in every way possible, for his own edification and benefit: to look good, to appear as if he truly cared about the grief of the Armenians, to get one up on the sitting president and all of those who planned to run for president against him (Obama). It is one thing to be a liar. It is another to lie about something that rips the hearts out of an entire people. It is also another thing to cowardly and cavalierly toss out and then toss aside a promise of such existential weight with a flip comment. The following is fact and it will never go away: “In April 1915 the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until 1923 when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared” (Armenian National Institute, 2016).

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President Obama, don’t go to your grave having used the genocide of millions of Armenians to garner popularity and potential votes in your runs for president. Don’t do that. That is not what a moral person would do. It is not honorable. It is, in fact, the very definition of immoral and dishonesty. The choice is before you. Do you have the integrity to honor your word? Or are you going to leave your presidency and go to your death a man who was a moral coward? You are better than that, aren’t you? If so, then act now and honor your promise and join German Chancellor Merkel in recognizing the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians for what it was: GENOCIDE! Samuel Totten is a scholar of genocide studies, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. His most recent book is Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains, Sudan (Transaction, 2015).