Insensitive yes, but Geronimo reference is historically apt
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 11:26AM 
From the AP on Yahoo news:
WASHINGTON – The top staffer for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee is objecting to the U.S. military's use of the code name "Geronimo" for Osama bin Laden during the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.
Geronimo was an Apache leader in the 19th century who spent many years fighting the Mexican and U.S. armies until his surrender in 1886.
Loretta Tuell, staff director and chief counsel for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said Tuesday it was inappropriate to link Geronimo, whom she called "one of the greatest Native American heroes," with one of the most hated enemies of the United States.
"These inappropriate uses of Native American icons and cultures are prevalent throughout our society, and the impacts to Native and non-Native children are devastating," Tuell said.
This is what I said in Esquire's The Politics Blog yesterday:
It's become a drones-without-borders world, befitting the frontier-integrating age we live in. Think of the American West after the Civil War and how we spent years hunting down all the Native American "insurgents" who popped up over the decades. Bin Laden goes down just like a Crazy Horse or Geronimo — a grubby end to a mythical warrior figure. But the larger process goes on, even as the Chinese drive most of of globalization's advance in that part of the world. But, yes, we'll keep hunting them down. That's what bureaucracies do, and that's why the lone-wolf resistance always loses in the end.
I saw comments that indicated that people were offended by my Crazy Horse reference. The Senate staffer takes similar umbrage at the US military referencing Geronimo.
Yes, now, we cast these figures in better lights, but at the time they were considered blood-thirsty killers who preyed on Americans, which, of course, they were and did - whatever the post-dated nobility of their motives.
But my larger point, and I think the military's larger point, is the similarity of the process. The US military hunted Geronimo for many years. With Crazy Horse, it was a sad and grubby end to a warrior's life, getting shot while surrendering at a US government post (I've been to the historical site).
In their time, these guys were magnificent insurgents who brutally murdered in a fashion designed to incite terror. They were fighting for their way of life - and they doomed in the same way that Bin Laden was. The process of frontier integration was too powerful and too vast and they could not adjust. Back then it was the westward expansion of the US - a microcosm of today's globalization expansion.
Reader Comments (8)
Fort Sill Oklahoma, now an artillery center, was a cavalry post back in the days of the Indian wars. As a young soldier in 1963, I walked Ft. Sill's streets that were named after troopers who had been killed in battles with the Apache and Comanche. The names were Irish. Famine, poverty and religious oppression drove Irishmen to American shores. They joined the United States Army to survive. They fought in the Civil War and they fought against the Indians.
Now Native Americans have a proud tradition of serving in the American military. They have fought in all our wars, all over the world. In World War II our paratroopers yelled "Geronimo" when they jumped from planes. The "Code Talkers" baffled the Japanese in the Pacific. We even have a "Tomahawk" missile and "Apache" helicopters.
Read the casualty list from 911. Irish names in abundance, civilians, firemen and policemen.
I wonder if Geronimo and Crazy Horse could have envisioned Casinos?
What a facinating history we have. So few people are aware of it.
The fact that you A) compare globalization to westward expansion and B) think that this is a good thing, reveals the ultimate weakness of your ideas. We're talking about entire cultures being almost completely wiped out, their descendants consigned to irrelevance and destitution. You're completely blind to the notion that globalization might sweep away things that we might want to preserve. To be sure, they did great violence in their opposition, but Geronimo and Crazy Horse were defending their people against invasion.
Globalization is doing a lot of good for a lot of people, but it's also a force of great destruction, and you willfully refuse to acknowledge that. You want to spread globalization through the barrel of a gun, consequences be damned. Westward expansion is the classic example of the consequences of this process, and it's really telling that you scoff at anyone who points that out. There is more at work here than insensitivity.
@Matt: I've been a longtime reader of this blog. I suggest that you go back and look at Dr. Barnett's previous output, including all three of his books. Then, if you still feel the same way, come back and continue the conversation. I'm not trying to "feed a troll", but I get the sense that you might be new here. Also, this is not the comments section on cnn, fox, or politico.com, so let's avoid insinuating racism.
I don't think it helps to demonize Matt's comment, which raises some valid issues, namely, that there is a price tag attached to globalization in the form of the loss of some traditional cultures which are simply incapable of adapting. However, TPMB has generally emphasized in his writings that there is an important distinction to be made between American westward expansion and the current wars that accompany globalization. The purpose of westward expansion was the generally forcible removal of Native Americans so that their lands could be occupied by Euro-American settlers. In the case of globalization, the US has no interest in occupying anyone's land. Rather, the purpose of the modern wars of globalization is to create a world that is safe for the vast majority of the world's population that wishes to join the global middle class. That process conflicts with the strictures imposed by rigid traditional cultures. If those cultures can't adapt, they will be lost. That's just the way it is.
Agree with Stuart. Matthew's point is well taken, even if his comment about the weakness of my ideas being revealed reflects his ignorance of my writings. Globalization is both highly destructive and highly constructive - that's been my line for a decade and a half. If it weren't destructive, I wouldn't have called it the "Pentagon's New Map."
I simply side with globalization's benefits over its costs. Freedom for women, much longer and better lives, democratization, lifting of incomes, connectivity, etc. Yes, cultures get destroyed and assimilated in the process. I just accept those costs as worthwhile, especially since globalization is hardly imposed (the "barrel of a gun" notion remains the most farcical misrepresentation of my work) but spreads in response to the demand from those people currently denied access (what I call the Gap). I argue we should participate in that process, trying to reduce the violence that invariably ensues in this revolutionary process. Some see a conspiracy in that notion. I see reality.
@Matt: I apologize for the snark. I certainly don't want to demonize anyone, and I was serious about coming back to the conversation. Both Stuart and TPMB addressed the substance of the points you made in a much better manner than I did.
Thanks everyone, especially Dr. Barnett, for responding to my comments. I was being a bit more blunt (and second-person) than usual--I get tetchy when I feel that Natives are being attacked, because it's so acceptable to do so--and if my tone was overly confrontational, I apologize. I do stand by the general thrust of my comments.
I am actually rather familiar with Dr. Barnett's work. I've read PNM and parts of GP, seen several versions of the brief, and have been reading the blog off and on for a few years. I am more skeptical now than I used to be, but I do owe him a debt in my thinking.
If I could put my comments another way, it's this: TPMB would recast U.S. military power to be "globalization's bodyguard." This is perhaps not the same as talking about "globalization through the barrel of a gun," but in practice it's quite similar. Dr. Barnett supported the escalation of war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, drone strikes worldwide, and the intervention in Libya. The ultimate goal is that global capitalism be imposed, by force if necessary.
He would make this explicit in the international system, using the G20 as a board of directors to finance interventions in the interests of the global economic elite. The purpose is to make the Gap an acceptable place for economic exploitation by wealthier states and corporations. As I recall, TPMB has said something to the effect of, "exploitation is a good thing," so good that it should be defended and expanded, sometimes by aggressive use of military force. The explicit comparison to westward expansion shows that, even as new societies and economies are created, it is an inherently destructive process. I know he doesn't like the word "empire," but it is essentially a capitalist empire he is proposing.
I want to make clear that I am NOT proposing isolationism, the downfall of all capitalism, or an end to globalization. I would suggest that we help empower and build upon local institutions and economies rather than try to impose a version on the American system on everyone else. Most telling is--and Dr. Barnett is hardly the only person guilty of this--the emphasis of foreign direct investment over everything else, including schools, infrastructure, clean water, and domestic investment. Not that FDI is not important or helpful, but if we were going to pick one aspect of development that has more effect on the profits of international financiers than on the country itself, FDI would be it.
Another example: the WTO, World Bank, and the IMF are all international organizations whose purpose is largely to support U.S. commercial interests, especially when a country is in a weak position economically. Notably, they require tariffs be dropped in order to receive loans, debt relief, or the international equivalent of a good credit rating. The tariffs fall, and subsidized American agricultural products (among other things) flood the market, destroying livelihoods. TPMB is right to decry both ag subsidies and protectionism in the developed world, but we rightly protected our industry when we were a developing country, and it is appropriate that other nations do the same.
When one is a citizen of such a powerful country as the United States, it's very easy to take one's own national interests and believe them to be the interests of the world. Sometimes that is so, and sometimes it is not.
To put it another way: I have never seen the brief live, but if I do, the question I'd most likely ask Dr. Barnett during the Q&A session would be this: "You've argued eloquently in favor of globalization. What, if anything, are its greatest drawbacks, and how should we go about mitigating them?"
@Thomas Bell, I don't feel that you were snarking me--certainly no more than I was snarking Dr. Barnett--, but I do want to say that I was not insinuating racism and I don't feel there was anything there that gave that impression. This isn't an attack against you or anyone else, but people are often too willing to think they or someone else is being called racist when that isn't actually happening.
Anyway, sorry for the snippy tone earlier and now the postscript to an already long response.