I'm a few days late to this item, but L.A. Times carries a story that the Obama administration is wavering on whether or not to issue a presidential declaration recognizing the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915:
Administration officials are considering postponing a presidential statement, citing progress toward a thaw in relations between Turkey and neighboring Armenia. Further signs of warming -- such as talk of reopening border crossings -- would strengthen arguments that a U.S. statement could imperil the progress.
"At this moment, our focus is on how, moving forward, the United States can help Armenia and Turkey work together to come to terms with the past," said Michael Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council. He said the administration was "encouraged" by improvements in relations and believed it was "important that the countries have an open and honest dialogue about the past."
The U.S. desire to use Turkey as a military supply line for Afghanistan does not justify the weasel words of this about-face: "work together to come to terms with the past" euphemizes Turkey's chauvinistic refusal to acknowledge 20th-century history and ignores the fact that Armenia needn't come to terms with it at all -- it already has done. (It should also be noted that the modern Kemalist state is not responsible for the atrocity it claims never happened; its imperial predecessor committed it, which goes to show that nostalgia for world empire is not exclusively a superpower phenomenon).
"His support for the Senate resolution acknowledging the genocide all these years later... His willingness, as president, to commemorate it... And certainly to call a spade a spade and to speak truth about it... He's not going to focus group his way to making important policy decisions... He's a true friend of the Armenian people... an acknowledger of the history and somebody who can respond to the fierce urgency of now..." These are of some of Samantha Power's glowing recommendations of Barack Obama, spoken to the Armenian-American community, in February 2008. The author of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, and a member of the National Security Council, has had to eat her words before, and probably will again in the future.
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