KERRY SAYS GENOCIDE; BUSH DOESN'T; A CLEAR CHOICA FOR
ARMENIANS
27-04-2004 13:20:00 | USA | Articles and Analyses
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!