The deputy director of the Democratic National Committee opposed issuing a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this year—because then the DNC might have to issue statements commemorating the mass murder in Darfur and Rwanda, too. Gosh, genocide can be such a bother sometimes!
This disturbing episode, which has been exposed in the Wikileaks emails, began when then-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked her staff to prepare a public statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day this past May. Senior communications director Ryan Banfill forwarded Schulz’s request to DNC Deputy Director Kate Houghton.
Houghton was plainly annoyed at the prospect of having to, as she put it, “do statements for every Jewish holiday.” Banfill attempted to clarify for Houghton that the day in question is not simply one of many “Jewish holidays” but rather an occasion to commemorate genocide. He wrote back: “This is about remembering the Holocaust. Never forget.”
But Houghton dug in her heels. “Yup… or Darfur or Armenia or Rwanda or Bosnia (which PS is where my husband served),” she replied. “Does she want us to do one for each other those remembrance days as well?”
Well, why not? How difficult would it be for the DNC staff to issue a boilerplate anti-genocide statement five times each year—especially when such statements are often little more than cut-and-paste duplications of earlier proclamations? The sad answer to that question, however, is that it might indeed be difficult—not because it would take up Kate Houghton’s precious time, but because of the political embarrassment it might engender.
Consider the Armenian genocide. As a presidential candidate in 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama declared, “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide.” By contrast, the statements that President Obama has issued each April on Armenian Remembrance Day have never included the g-word. Instead, he has used an Armenian expression: “Meds Yeghern,” meaning “the great calamity.” Fear of offending Turkey (the perpetrator of the genocide) is considered more important than recognizing historical facts.
Or take Darfur. The president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2009 for organizing and sponsoring the Darfur genocide. Yet in the years since then, Bashir has traveled openly to numerous Arab and African countries, some of them major recipients of U.S. aid, such as Egypt, Iraq, and Libya, yet President Obama has never taken any steps to bring about his arrest—nor even criticized those regimes for hosting Bashir. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended her failure to challenge Egypt for hosting Bashir, on the grounds that Egypt has to “prioritize” (i.e. ignore Darfur) because it has “a long border” with Sudan.
Why, one might wonder, has President Obama opted to take a hands-off attitude toward the only sitting foreign leader to be indicted for genocide? Evidently because he is hesitant to annoy Bashir’s allies—Russia, China, and the Arab League.
Rwanda, too, constitutes something of a political inconvenience. One of the most powerful officials in the current administration, Susan Rice, was director of Africa Affairs for the National Security Council during the 1994 Rwanda genocide. It was Rice who expressed concern to her colleagues that the U.S. position on Rwanda might affect the outcome of that year’s midterm congressional elections.
If the Democratic National Committee were to issue a statement commemorating the Armenian genocide, it might face embarrassing questions about why the president won’t call it genocide. If the DNC issues a statement about Darfur, some journalist might ask why the administration won’t lift a finger—in fact, won’t even say a meaningful word—against the perpetrator of that genocide. And if Kate Houghton was required to draft a proclamation concerning Rwanda, it might call unwelcome attention to Susan Rice’s role in that disgraceful episode.
So even though the Wikileaks emails indicate Houghton’s resistance to genocide commemoration was motivated by her desire to avoid being bothered with the matter, the political reality is that for the DNC and the Obama administration, drawing attention to genocide remembrance could turn out to be quite a Pandora’s box.
Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
