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I wrote today about @JoeBiden's dog-bites-man delivery of a campaign promise, to call the Armenian genocide a "genocide," which is somethings that U.S. presidents usually talk up and almost never do. https://reason.com/2021/04/26/bidens-long-overdue-recognition-of-the-armenian-genocide-could-but-probably-wont-produce-a-foreign-policy-rethink/
Been writing about this issue a LONG time. Here's my 2007 L.A. Times interview with the Vaclav Havel-influenced former U.S. ambassador to Armenia John Marshall Evans, who was pressured to retire by the State Department after daring to use the G-word. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oew-welch24apr24-story.html
In 2016, I wrote about how it was the first presidential race in decades in which neither major-party nominee made the genocide-recognition promise. (Hillary had in 2008, but being Secretary of State put the end to that.) https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-welch-armenian-genocide-20160422-story.html
To me, the genocide-recognition question has been the single most symbolic demonstration about how "idealistic" humanitarian intervention requires grubby deals with the devil, and stunning about-faces. https://reason.com/2019/09/13/the-corruptions-of-power/
All it takes is just one ally to be insanely dedicated to a particular mania, and comparatively important to your near-term strategic needs, and you'll just contort yourself into any which embarrassing shape. https://reason.com/2013/11/21/white-house-refuses-to-display-88-year-o/
Anyway, buncha links to related writing sprinkled throughout this old piece: https://reason.com/2014/04/24/obama-breaks-armenian-genocide-promise-f/
(Whoops, meant man-bites-dog at the top of this thread, but it's too late now. So instead, enjoy a related journalistic kerfuffle I had mostly forgotten about.) http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/04/armenian_genocide_dispute.php
