By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier For the fourth year in a row, Pres. Bush has broken his promise to the Armenian American community. Last Saturday, he issued yet another annual April 24 statement that does not refer to the Armenian Genocide as "genocide." During the 2000 presidential campaign, then candidate George Bush, in a written statement, referred to the "genocidal campaign" perpetrated against the Armenians and pledged to properly characterize it when elected President. Since the election, however, Pres. Bush's handlers have not permitted him to say "Armenian Genocide" in his annual April 24 statements. Instead, he has used every other conceivable word in the English language except genocide to describe what happened to the Armenians from 1915 to 1923. Sadly, this charade keeps going on, year after year. Here is this year's selection of Pres. Bush's evasive and euphemistic words: "One of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century... the annihilation of as many as 1.5 million Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire...this terrible event remains a source of pain for people in Armenia and Turkey," and finally, "this loss of life." To add insult to injury, Pres. Bush's April 24 statement, most inappropriately, includes praise for the discredited Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC). The President's "wise" advisers, incredibly, may not have heard that TARC officially, and mercifully, terminated its existence two weeks ago. This is the second year in a row that Pres. Bush has plugged TARC. By doing so, he has left no doubt in anyone's mind that this is an American-funded and supported initiative. Nothing is more damning for TARC than the fact that the Bush Administration is its mastermind. By not saying genocide, Pres. Bush also ignored the letters signed by 169 bi-partisan members of the House of Representatives and 22 U.S. Senators (including Sen. John Kerry) urging him to use the term "Armenian Genocide" in his annual commemorative statement. To make matters worse, the Bush Administration continues to oppose a pending congressional resolution that marks the 15th anniversary of the U.S. implementation of the Genocide Convention, for the simple reason that it includes a passing reference to the Armenian Genocide, along with the Holocaust as well as the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. Senate Resolution 164 currently has 38 Senators as cosponsors. A counterpart measure in the House (Resolution 193) was unanimously adopted by the Judiciary Committee last May and currently has 110 cosponsors. However, the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at the instruction of Pres. Bush's handlers, has refused to allow a vote on this resolution by the full House. Speaker Hastert has also broken the promise he made in 2000 to reschedule a vote on the Armenian Genocide resolution that he pulled out of the House floor at Pres. Clinton's request moments before its assured passage. I hope the voters would not ignore Speaker Hastert's antagonistic stance on this issue when he asks for their support in this year's elections. One may wonder why the President of the United States insists on issuing these flawed April 24 statements year after year, thereby antagonizing the Armenian-American community. Pres. Bush's shrewd handlers probably hope that by issuing these sugarcoated statements, they would be able to fool a few politically unsophisticated Armenians and gain their support. The Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry, on the other hand, had no problem using the term "Armenian Genocide" in his April 24 statement. He described the Genocide as "a systematic policy of ethnic extermination" by the Ottoman Empire that "killed or deported over 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children." In his statement, Sen. Kerry thanked "Armenian Americans for their persistence in the struggle to gain international recognition of this atrocity. By keeping the memory of this tragedy alive, Armenian Americans remind us all of our collective responsibility to insure that such horrors are not repeated. I am proud of my work with the Armenian American community to gain broader recognition of the Armenian Genocide, including fighting alongside Senator Robert Dole in 1990 for designation of April 24 as a national day of remembrance for this tragedy.... I join Armenian Americans and Armenians worldwide in mourning the victims of the Armenian Genocide and I call on governments and people everywhere to formally recognize this tragedy. Only by learning from this dark period of history and working to prevent future genocides can we truly honor the memories of those Armenians who suffered so unjustly." Most Armenians are naturally skeptical about such campaign statements given the fact that they have been misled before by Pres. Bush (senior), Pres. Clinton, and the current President Bush. As candidates, they all promised to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and after the election, they did the exact opposite by actively lobbing against its recognition! What makes Sen. Kerry hopefully different from these three presidents is that before becoming a presidential candidate, he had an extensive track record of supporting the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and cosponsoring resolutions in the Senate on this subject. His 20-year long history of supporting various Armenian causes gives us the confidence that once elected, he will continue being supportive. Of course, it is up to the Armenian American community to cultivate the necessary contacts within Sen. Kerry's inner circle in order to be able to counter all those who try to undermine his favorable position on this issue. The choice is therefore clear between Bush and Kerry. Those who want four more years of broken promises on the Armenian Genocide can keep on backing Pres. Bush. However, those who want the recognition of the Armenian Genocide should support the candidacy of John Kerry. A final word to those Turks who are ghoulishly rejoicing that once again Pres. Bush has refrained from using the term "Armenian Genocide." Only a totally shameless people would jump for joy when the President of the United States is accusing their nation of committing "the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1.5 million Armenians through forced exile and murder...." If the President of the United States had accused my ancestors of such dastardly crimes, I would have been in no mood to celebrate. Instead, I would have been terribly embarrassed and ashamed!

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