Some Indian groups and Religious Left groups are protesting that
apparently the operation to kill Osama bin Laden was codenamed
“Geronimo.”
“While we decry terrorism in any form, we refute the
notion that our Native leaders, past and current, be paralleled in
any way with persons who unashamedly destroy life,”
complained the head of a United Methodist General Board of
Church and Society Native American Task Force. “We are all
articulating the disappointment, concern and frustration with the
use of the name of this iconic Native American hero.”
Geronimo was a shrewd warrior who combated Mexican and
U.S. military forces for decades. Whether he was a “hero” is open
to question. He did “unashamedly destroy life,” including
atrocities against civilians. (His defenders point out that Apaches
also were on the receiving end of atrocities.) Mexicans and
Americans at the time viewed him with some of the same dread and
loathing more recently aimed at Osama bin Laden. Geronimo with his
very few remaining warriors did not surrender until 1886,
pursued by thousands of U.S. Army cavalry. It’s hard to
see how his having prolonged a vicious and futile war helped his
people.
During his nearly last quarter century of life after
surrender, Geronimo sort of embraced Christianity at least for a
time, largely accepted U.S. rule, and became a nationwide
celebrity, despite or because of his former status as a brutal
warrior and enemy of U.S. forces. He was even featured in Teddy
Roosevelt’s 1904 inaugural parade. Presumably Osama bin Laden, had
he survived as a captive, would never have ridden down Pennsylvania
Avenue in an open vehicle.
Evangelical Left writer Brian McLaren, guru to the
Emergent Church movement, was visiting Europe during Osama bin
Laden’s death and fumed over the “Geronimo” codename, which
“shocked, disgusted, dismayed, and sickened” him. McLaren chose to
read into the codename a rich tapestry of sinister intent, backed
by centuries of sordid imperialist history. “Are we still engaged
in Westward Expansion (making our way from California to Hawaii and
the Philippines, then to Southeast Asia and now to the Middle
East)?” he
wondered ominously. “Are we still cowboys hunting Indians? Are
we still working out a narrative of Manifest Destiny? Has there
been no acknowledgment in our government and our people of the
holocaust we waged against Native Peoples, the land theft,
attempted genocide, cultural imperialism, and outrageous
injustice?” McLaren indignantly charged: “In the code-name
Geronimo, has the US government made a ‘Freudian slip’ that reveals
one of the dark and violent drives still at work in our national
psyche?”
In Religious Left mythology, the U.S. is an endlessly and
uniquely hegemonic power whose crimes began with the suppression of
the original tribal peoples, for which we should endlessly seek
atonement. As with many myths, there’s a bit of truth here. But
this particular myth neglects to admit that the original tribal
peoples were themselves perpetually warring against each other, and
exterminating each other, many centuries before any European
arrived. All nations and cultures everywhere were founded amid
conquest and blood, for better or worse. While traditional
Christians can readily acknowledge the sinfulness of all humanity,
Religious Left utopians struggle with this admission, preferring to
demonize impersonal systems: militarism, imperialism, capitalism,
Western Civilization.
Even the distinguished British theologian and Church of
England Bishop Tom Wright is not immune from this affliction.
Thoroughly sensible and orthodox on theology, but often absurd
politically, he often bemoans the supposed unique threat posed by
the U.S. In a British op-ed, he
speculated that the U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden was
rooted in sinister “American exceptionalism” and “The Myth of the
American Superhero and Captain America and the Crusade Against
Evil.” He reluctantly granted the myth may have been “necessary in
the days of the wild west.” But nowadays it “legitimises a form of
vigilantism, of taking the law into one’s own hands, which provides
‘justice’ only of the crudest sort.” Actions like the strike on
Osama bin Laden only “work,” Wright warned, when the “hero can
shoot better than the villain.” But the villains’ friends may seek
vengeance, which is why “proper justice is designed precisely to
outflank such escalation,” he explained. Presumably “proper
justice” would have been a cordial court trial for Bin Laden,
though it’s unclear how a prolonged media circus around such a
trial and decades long captivity would have avoided provoking
“vengeance” from Bin Laden’s friends.
Proper justice in today’s world is difficult, Wright
surmised, because the U.S. has portrayed the UN as “hapless,” as
though the UN itself had not contributed to the impression. Wright
concluded by wondering: “And what has any of this to do with
something most Americans also believe, that the God of ultimate
justice and truth was fully and finally revealed in the crucified
Jesus of Nazareth, who taught people to love their enemies, and
warned that those who take the sword will perish by the sword?” So
Wright, who should know better, is seemingly at least a functional
pacifist, who won’t grasp that Christianity has always taught that
civil authorities are God’s instrument for wielding the sword
against the likes of Bin Laden. As to American Exceptionalism, all
great nations with the wherewithal have vigorously pursued their
most wicked enemies. It took Wright’s own British nation 13 years
to avenge the slaughter of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum with
General Herbert Horatio Kitchener’s victory at Omdurman, after
which Kitchener dug up the bones of Gordon’s tormentor, the
self-professed Mahdi, and dumped them into the Nile, while
reputedly keeping the skull for himself at least for a
time.
Of course, according to myth, young Yale students,
including President George W. Bush’s grandfather, supposedly dug up
Geronimo’s skull for their famed Skull and Bones Society. Some
Apaches, aided by the perpetually aggrieved Ramsey Clark, have
sought its
return. History can decide whether naming the Bin Laden operation
after Geronimo was wise or even consequential. What is more
noteworthy are the endless exertions of some Western church elites
to avoid confronting Bin Laden’s brand of evil while constructing
endless fantasies to demonize America.
