An underrecognized component of the presidency is the frequency with which presidents issue statements about arcane subjects. Most weeks and months are at some point designated as awareness months for various causes; many international events trigger formal responses that generally evade the American public’s attention.
On Saturday, though, the Biden administration issued a statement that actually raised some interest. In an annual statement about Armenian Remembrance Day, President Biden’s team inserted one controversial word: genocide.
“Each year on this day,” Biden’s 2021 statement read, “we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.” Compare that with the phrasing in 2016, when Biden was vice president: “Today we solemnly reflect on the first mass atrocity of the 20th century — the Armenian Meds Yeghern — when one and a half million Armenian people were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman empire.” Continue reading.