President Barack Obama’s delicate dance around a highly sensitive regional issue in Turkey on Monday irked a small but influential American political constituency, which is accusing him of falling “far short” of a campaign promise.At issue is the recognition as genocide the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman government in Turkey beginning in 1915.
Obama has unabashedly encouraged such recognition in the past. But he notably dialed back his rhetoric at a Monday press conference in Ankara with Turkish President Abdullah Gul, for whose government the issue is still quite raw, and later in an address to the Turkish Parliament.
Obama “missed a valuable opportunity to honor his public pledge to recognize the Armenian genocide,” Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, said in a statement.
The Washington-based advocacy group endorsed Obama and boasts of helping deliver large blocs of votes in swing states and tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. But on Monday, it was encouraging its members to call the White House to urge Obama “to be a man of his word and honor his pledge to recognize the Armenian genocide” as well as to take action to stop the killing in Darfur. - Politico Story
Get in line, there are many many people who supported Obama the Candidate and his "tell them what they want to hear" Rhetoric. Obama is finding that on the campaign trail it was all too easy to just up and tell them what they want to hear, but adhering to what you promised as a candidate isn't always possible. That is assuming that he intended to adhere to it.
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