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“While Turkish officials vehemently deny their complicity in the Armenian genocide to this day, a number of prestigious American news agencies covered the issue extensively,” author and political activist Lance Simmens noted in an article published by the Huffington Post.

“While I consider myself a student of history and political science I cannot recall any discussion of the event in either my undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate studies. The first I heard of the Armenian genocide was during the time I served as a U.S. Senate staff member during the decade of the 1980’s,” the author said.

Speaking about the recently released Armenian Genocide film “The Promise”, the author notes that it recounts a chapter in world history that many if not most Americans are unfamiliar with: namely, the Armenian genocide which may have claimed as many as 1.5 million Armenians between 1915-1917.

“While it certainly may be a hard sell to suggest that people plunk down the cost of a movie ticket to learn about another dark chapter in the history of mankind I heartily suggest that you do so to earn an appreciation for the complex historical and cultural parameters that have contributed to foreign policy and international relations issues,” says the author.

He notes that history lessons may not always offer answers to prickly questions governing relations between countries and cultures, but they surely help contextualize long-standing difficulties that can offer a key to helping resolve current problems.

“Foreign policy is an exacting and complicated exercise with potentially enormous consequences, intended and unintended. It cannot and should not be taken lightly and there are seasoned experts in the State Department and foreign embassies around the world who can shed significant light on dark issues. Yet this administration proposes essentially gutting the very resources that are critically required through its budget cuts to Foggy Bottom.

Get to work and start solving the problems that you are only making worse with the bellicose saber-rattling that only inflames already tense relations between allies and adversaries alike,” Lance Simmens sums up.