President Obama Still Recognizes The Armenian Genocide

Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the day the Armenian Genocide began, a solemn occasion that is annually marred by the United States government’s (along with many others’) refusal to label the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a “genocide.” There were many who hoped that this year might be different, and that President Obama might make good on his 2008 campaign promise to “recognize the Armenian Genocide” as president. As my Banter colleague Mike Luciano noted earlier this week, then-Senator Barack Obama also supported a Senate resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide, although he was not among the resolution’s 33 cosponsors.

President Obama’s failure to use the word “genocide” to describe the slaughter has become a vehicle for his opponents to attack him, and given the clarity of his campaign promise, it’s an arguably fair attack to level. This is one of those areas in which well-intentioned campaign promises run into the reality of governing. In some parallel universe, President Mitt Romney is taking heat for failing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In President Obama’s case, diplomatic reality has prevented him from setting U.S. policy in a way that would offend the government of Turkey. If you wanted to argue that the U.S. exerts leverage over its allies for far less worthy causes, I’d be hard-pressed to disagree.

The absurdity of this position, however, reached new heights this week when…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.