Samantha Power
Author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which includes parts on the Armenian Genocide.
Apologizing for not recognizing genocide while in Obama administration
Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower
I am very sorry that, during our time in office, we in the Obama administration did not recognize the #Armenian Genocide
https://twitter.com/SamanthaJPower/status/856561854520467457
Ex-Aide Regrets Obama’s Failure To Recognize Armenian Genocide
Հունիս 08, 2018
Artak Hambardzumian
Samantha Power, a former special adviser to President Barack Obama, on Friday expressed regret at his failure to ensure an official U.S. recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey during his tenure.
Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) in Yerevan, Power said Obama did not honor a key election campaign pledge because he did not want to jeopardize a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey and feared that Ankara could obstruct U.S. efforts to defeat the Islamic State extremist group.
Power, who advised Obama on foreign policy and human rights before serving as U.S. ambassador to the United States from 2013-2017, also blamed the “very volatile personality” of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Obama referred to the Armenian genocide as a “widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence” when he ran for president in 2008. He said that if elected he will officially recognize the World War One-era slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.
During that presidential race, Power famously recorded a five-minute video that urged Americans of Armenian descent to vote for Obama because of his stance on the genocide issue.
“I have great regret that we did not manage to go all the way to full recognition in the way that we had promised,” Power told RFE/RL during her first-ever visit to Armenia. “I really believed going into the White House that we would.”
“But in 2009, which was really the year that we would have done it right at the beginning, President Obama made clear that his view of the facts had not changed and everybody knew his view,” she said. “But he felt that the Armenian-Turkish normalization was at a very important and very fragile stage.
“Then, I think, at the hundred anniversary [of the genocide in 2015,] when it would have been another opportune time to recognize, we had just been granted access to Turkish bases to fight ISIS (Islamic State).”
“Turkey is a very powerful and large country that’s a NATO ally and has a lot of weight,” added the former U.S. official. “President Erdogan of course is a very volatile personality. So that also meant that some of the threats that he made were deemed more credible frankly.”
Power made clear that she thinks none of these factors justified Obama’s decisions. “There is really no excuse because, as I wrote before I became a U.S. government official, there really is never a good time to do it,” she said. “There is always going to be some set of issues and equities on the other side of the argument.”
Obama reportedly came very close to recognizing the genocide in an April 2015. While avoiding the politically sensitive word, he implicitly praised Pope Francis for calling the 1915 mass killings “the first genocide of the 20th century.” He also paid tribute to Henry Morgenthau, America’s World War One-era ambassador in Constantinople who tried to stop what he saw as a “campaign of race extermination.”
Obama’s 2015 statement followed a reportedly heated debate within his administration. The Associated Press reported at the time that an explicit recognition of the Armenian genocide was advocated by administration officials who deal more directly with human rights issues. Power was said to be among them.
Power said on Friday that the current and future U.S. administrations should follow the example of two dozen other nations and “defy the bullying that genocide deniers have done.” Asked whether she thinks President Donald Trump may do so, she said: “Trump is so volatile. Maybe we wake up one morning and there’ll be the tweet that we’ve all been waiting for: recognizing the genocide.”
In any case, the former Obama administration official went on, Armenians should keep fighting for greater international recognition of the genocide. They have already made major progress in that endeavor, she said, arguing that “there is almost nobody in any doubt around the world about the events of 1915.”
Power was visiting Armenia as a new member of an international committee that will select this weekend the latest winner of an annual humanitarian award created in memory of the Armenian genocide victims.
The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity award was established in 2015 by three prominent Diaspora Armenians: philanthropists Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan, and Vartan Gregorian, the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is designed to honor individuals around the world who risk their lives to help others.
Source: https://www.azatutyun.am/a/29280890.html
Think Again: Hypocrisy at its worst
Glendale News-Press
Think Again: Hypocrisy at its worst
By Zanku Armenian
May 7, 2012
It's a problem when the only news source that tells it like it is, with no holding back, is "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Watching the show is like a ritual of exposing the hypocrisy with the political leadership of our country.
Republicans will claim that all the news on "The Daily Show" is pro-Democrat.
But all you have to do is view Jon Stewart on a daily basis to see that he doesn't discriminate when it comes to exposing hypocrisy.
Maybe that's why so many have come to be fans of the show. There is so much lack of authenticity and honesty in our political establishment that Stewart easily fills a show every day exposing it all.
There is a recent example of hypocrisy that hits home for me in a personal way. President Obama and his close advisor and noted author on genocide, Samantha Power, recently demonstrated it.
A day before Armenians worldwide commemorate the Armenian genocide, President Obama gave a speech at theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum announcing the results of the Genocide Prevention Initiative he launched last year -- a directive to improve the U.S. government's capacity to respond to genocide and threats of genocide.
At his April 23 speech, he announced the formation of an Atrocity Prevention Board, which Power will chair.
Obama also repeated what he said last August: `Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.'
Obama paying respect to those victimized by the Holocaust is proper and the actions he is taking for genocide prevention are a step forward. But Obama's hypocrisy has left him with little credibility on the matter.
Since entering office, Obama has gone out of his way to aid the
Turkish government's denial of the Armenian genocide, despite his
earlier promises to speak truthfully about the issue. A politician
breaking campaign promises is nothing surprising, but to continue
repeating disingenuous words about genocide further diminishes our
country's ability to be a credible voice on the matter.
Behind this is Power, and that's where it gets especially infuriating. Power is the senior director of Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs for the National Security Council in the White House.
Previously, she was a professor at Harvard in human rights and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School, priding herself as a leading voice in human rights policy and genocide.
In 2002, Power wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book `A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,' in which she laid out our country's record of repeatedly failing to prevent or even condemn genocides around the world because of political expediency.
The first case study she cited was the Armenian genocide and how that set the pattern for inaction during future genocides. She also highlighted the U.S.' failure to speak truthfully about the Armenian genocide to this day.
I came to know Power when she was promoting her book, and my impression of her was that she was a principled intellectual, especially as an anti-genocide crusader.
The day of Obama's recent speech, Power presided over a conference on genocide at the Holocaust Museum and there was not a single mention of the Armenian genocide, as if it never happened.
On the White House's Facebook page that was streaming the conference, whenever one commented on this issue, like many did, the little interns in the White House were deleting all posts mentioning the Armenian genocide. This is what perpetrators of genocide do after such an atrocity: try to erase all evidence of the crime.
Power wrote in her book that former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, who himself has always protected and supported Turkey's genocide denial, told her to guard against two things, `selective memory and absolute dishonesty.'
Perhaps it's time for Power to read her own book again.
ZANKU ARMENIAN is a resident of Glendale and a corporate communications and public affairs professional. He can be reached at zanku.armenian@gmail.com.
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