What? In Turkey when asked by a reporter if he still held the position that what happened was genocide and he said YES. Time to move on to the next poutrage.
Despite his careful word choice, Obama said his position on the killings was unchanged.
"I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed," he said. "My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts."
I havent turned on him, but I do think anyone who does is not in the right. He promised to use the word and in all his staments he was avoided it by alluding to his use during the campaign. i appreciate what he did back then, but he did break his promise and that isnt people being bitter and bitchy.
He was not perfectly clear about his posistion because he said he would use the word "genocide" as president and has yet to. You can think it is a stupid nitpicky thing to want to hear "genocide" but Obama agreed it was important and now he has avoided it. That is a broken promise.
While i agree with most of his policies, it doesnt make his omission any less a broken promise
For serious. It's like the people who were up in arms about the anti-gay marriage guy leading the prayer at Obama's inauguration about how it sent a bad message and he was backing down from his campaign promises and turning his back on blah blah blah disappointed blah blah blah.
There has been a pretty clear history of American presidents avoiding using the term "genocide", which is ALSO what the Turkish government does, whilst denying anything really even happened in 1915 and on into the early 1920s
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There are more recent issues involving genocide. The worst one was in 1994 during the obvious genocide going on against Tutsis in Rwanda, and the U.S. and U.K. fought all attempts for the U.N. to pass a resolution condemning the killings so long as it contained the word genocide. (Under the U.N. Charter, member countries are forced to intervene to stop genocide, but the Rwandan genocide happened just after the "Black Hawk Down" incident in Somalia, the U.S. wasn't anxious to see any more dead troops dragged around in front of a TV camera, so they blocked inclusion of the word.) So, Rwanda was never acknowledged as genocide, but it certainly was genocide on a grand scale. Almost 1 million people slaughtered in three months.
Oh, defiantly. It was a disgrace. Though, I do find it encouraging to see anti-genocide campaigns joining forces though. More recently, Ive been hearing about campaigns that combine the Armenian Genocide, Jewish Holocaust, Pol Pot's genocide against his own people in Cambodia, the Rwandan Genocide, Kosovo and of course the Genocide in Darfur. The focus being that when genocides aren't recognized preventing future ones is impossible. I'm glad more people are coming together. I remember I was really young when a survivor from Rwanda spoke at a commemoration for the Arm Gen. Must have been like 12 years ago. That was my first real exposure to other genocides. It seems to be evolving into a more comprehensive front
I'm perfectly aware of these facts, actually. That's part of my argument for naming the genocide for what it was. I think these things will happen over and over in a world where genocide goes by unspoken and unnamed. The Armenian Genocide is one of those unnamed atrocities that needs to be spoken of frankly and clearly, in order for people to recognize how common it is and how dangerous it is to let mass-violence slip away into obscurity, forgotten and unidentified. When we don't recognize what has happened, how can we expect people to recognize when it happens again??
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Despite his careful word choice, Obama said his position on the killings was unchanged.
"I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed," he said. "My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts."
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He was not perfectly clear about his posistion because he said he would use the word "genocide" as president and has yet to. You can think it is a stupid nitpicky thing to want to hear "genocide" but Obama agreed it was important and now he has avoided it. That is a broken promise.
While i agree with most of his policies, it doesnt make his omission any less a broken promise
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Haters gotta hate, as the gif says.
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