Who Should Be More Pitied: Pres. Obama or Naive Armenians?

Harut Sassounian

BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN

For eight years now, Pres. Obama has failed to keep his campaign promise to call the Armenian Genocide a genocide. Yet, for some incomprehensible reason, which can only be described as naiveté, many Armenians in the United States and around the world have kept up the vain hope ever since 2009 ”” Pres. Obama’s first year in office ”” that he will use the term Armenian Genocide in 2010 or 2011 or 2012.

When he did not utter those words at the end of his first term in office, these naive Armenians were convinced that Pres. Obama would pronounce them during his second and final term, starting in 2013. They wrongly reasoned that Pres. Obama would be more likely to say genocide then, as he would not run for reelection, and therefore not worry about criticism from either Turkey or his domestic political opponents.

When Pres. Obama continued his refusal to say Armenian Genocide, these same naive Armenians came up with a new reason to keep up their wishful thinking. They thought that since Pres. Obama had dared to reverse the long-standing restrictive U.S. policy on Cuba, he would act with similar boldness on the Armenian Genocide issue! This, of course, proved to be a baseless speculation.

Finally, when all else failed, the naive Armenians expected Pres. Obama to pronounce those two forbidden words on April 24, 2016; his last opportunity to do so. That prediction also did not materialize. In his latest statement, Pres. Obama used every euphemism in the dictionary to describe what happened to the Armenians in 1915, except for the word genocide! Here are the results of the latest verbal gymnastics practiced by Pres. Obama: “mass atrocity; deported; massacred; marched to their deaths; suffered; dark days; tragedy; violence; and horror.”