April 24th was the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide that killed 1.5 million Christians in the Ottoman Empire. As philosopher George Santayana noted, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it; only in refusing to forget can the living refuse the encroachment of evil.
On April 24th, 1915, community leaders were slaughtered in Constantinople. The Muslim nation then “tolerated” the rest by imposing the same jizya tax that is happening today under Sharia law. Then gun control, then a draft, and then the slippery slope became a cliff. Death marches followed, ending in Der Zor. It wasn’t even a camp, only a place in the Syrian desert where Christians were slaughtered with axes and swords. Humanity erected a memorial at Der Zor on the literal bones of countless, precious, Armenian Christians. The only equivalent is the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.
I write today as a Christian watching the wholesale slaughter of Christians by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). I write to remind you that ISIS blew up the Der Zor Memorial in September 2014. I write to remind you that Adolph Hitler rationalized his own genocide by saying, “Who, after all, today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” (Instead of loading up Christians in freight cars in Aleppo, he loaded up Jews in freight cars in Nazi ghettos.)
The Armenian people suffer under President Erdogan who denies it even happened. So brainwashed are their citizens that recent studies show less than 10% of Turks believe their government should acknowledge the mass killings were genocide. And so, every year, Europeans still cognizant of the Holocaust lead the fruitless charge in urging our president to join over 20 other nations and fulfill his 2008 campaign promise to recognize the Turkish “genocide.” It’s something that everyone from Pope Francis to Vladimir Putin has done. Even Sen. Robert Menendez, notwithstanding his 14 criminal indictments, publicly urges President Obama to use the word “genocide.” He refuses. Quick to chide Christians today for the crusades and mock their Old Testament, the president has, for seven years, in deference to our most unruly NATO member (Turkey), released carefully-worded statements avoiding that word “genocide.” Oh, how many sins of omission are committed in the name of political correctness.
Today I read a headline “Kim Kardashian calls on Obama to label Armenian massacre ‘genocide’.” It’s that moment when Kim Kardashian has more moral courage than your president. As the blood of martyrs cry out from under the altar, there are no words, save those from the Great White Throne judgment, that are sufficient for the gutless, spineless, heartless vestige of a man known as President Obama. With politics as your God, who will be your Savior?