Facing genocide
 Does President Obama stand with Pope Francis — or with Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan? One hundred years ago this month, Turkish soldiers began slaughtering Armenian Christians amid the chaos of World War I. Four months later, 800,000 were dead. The final toll was at least 1.5 million — perhaps 90 percent of the local population. Historians cite that barbaric campaign as the first genocide in a century that would see far too many episodes of targeted ethnic annihilation. But Turkey has never acknowledged the true nature of this crime against humanity, pretending instead that the Armenians died in a civil war. And neither have many world leaders, for fear of alienating the government of a strategically important power. That, sadly, includes President Obama — who, like all of his predecessors, won’t use the word “genocide” when commemorating the Armenian holocaust. But back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama loudly declared that America “deserves a president who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide” and vowed, “I will be that president.” Seven years later, he still has yet to “be that president.” Meanwhile, Francis last Sunday became the first pope to publicly acknowledge the Armenian genocide during a Mass to mark the centennial. (John Paul II did so in a written statement.) The pontiff also not only equated the Armenian genocide with the Nazi and Stalinist eras, but drew a parallel to today’s attacks by radical Islamists on Christians in the Middle East and Africa. And Wednesday, the European Parliament called on Turkey to finally acknowledge the genocide. The silence from Washington remains deafening — and profoundly disappointing. |
