COMMENTARY: America Must Accept Armenian Killings as "Genocide"

While Christians around the world celebrated Easter on April 24, 2011, Armenians on that day also paid tribute to the 96th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians under Ottoman Turks during World War I.

Some 1.5 million Armenians are believed to have been killed between 1915 and 1917. Armenians describe the killings as "genocide," but Turkey refuses to recognize these killings as genocide -- and even denies that they occurred.

On April 24, US President Barack Obama issued a statement, saying the mass deaths of Armenians during World War I represent "one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century."

Regrettably -- for the third consecutive year -- President Obama did not use the word "genocide" to describe the Armenian deaths. Why? Because President Obama is afraid that doing so will jeopardize United States--Turkish relations.

In fact, last year, a US Congressional panel supported a statement calling the Armenian killings "genocide;" however, consideration of this panel's support never reached the full US House of Representatives for approval, because of the Obama Administration's influence in preventing a vote on it by the full House of Representatives.

Immediately after the US Congressional panel voted to support the genocide statement last year, Turkey recalled its ambassador from Washington, because it was angry about this vote and it wanted to take some "punitive action" against the United States.

Turkey returned its ambassador to the U.S. a few months later -- only after it was reassured by the Obama Administration that it would block the statement approved by the Congressional panel from ever reaching the full House of Representatives. To the present day, the statement on Turkish genocide has not reached the House of Representatives -- and it probably never will.

This kind of threat by Turkey -- and the cowardly response to it by the United States -- is not the kind of government America's forefathers envisioned when they established America as an independent democratic nation.

America must not allow itself to be intimidated by Turkey -- or any other nation for that matter -- especially when doing so is in violation of the democratic ideals that have made the United States the great country that it is today.

For America to relinquish its democratic principles because of a threat from a foreign nation clearly conveys that America has lost its democratic spirit in taking a position on what it believes is the proper thing to do.