Finally, Congress Calls It Turkish Genocide [PHIL-OSOPHY]

There is a God! And I thank Him for a modern-day miracle that just happened in the Congress.

The United States has officially recognized the willful murdering of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Turks as genocide. America has shamefully and for too long carried the water for Turkey's efforts to whitewash history.

Before World War I, estimates say there were about two million Christian Armenians in the waning Ottoman Turkish Empire. On April 24, 1915, several hundred Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed, starting the extermination. By 1922, the Turks annihilated 1.5 million Armenians for the purpose of eradicating their entire race forever.

To me, that description sums up the definition of genocide. Yet for all these years America, in a dishonorable tradition, never officially called the historical mass slaughter by its appropriate name for fear of offending our NATO ally Turkey. 

Armenians were ordered to turn in all their weapons. What followed were mass executions into enormous graves and death marches of men, women and children across the Syrian desert to concentration camps, with many dying along the way of exhaustion, starvation and terminal dehydration.

The fact that our nation has been Turkey's accomplice for ignoring this for so long is repulsive. What made Congress finally make good on this? The recent attacks by the Turkish military against the Kurdish people. I am still beyond disappointed that 11 members of Congress opposed the measure, but sadly they did.

History must be accurate and word-perfect, even though the Turks are livid over this.  It's taken way too long for Congress to put a proper name to genocide. It's about time America has stopped turning a deaf ear and blind eye to the truth.

Phil Paleologos is the host of The Phil Paleologos Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Contact him at phil@wbsm.com and follow him on Twitter @PhilPaleologos. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.