There’s been an uproar over Bin Laden’s code name being Geronimo. Yet when it comes to military history, or when it comes to economic development, the similarities are clear…
Consider that Americans living in the time of Geronimo’s saw him as the same kind of evil as americans today see Bin Laden. What’s forgotten in both narratives is the rapid spread of globalization / exploitation of resources by the world’s most powerful. And how these activities inevitably terrorize and embolden the ones whose families, clans or tribes are killed in the process… Please consider that.
The persecution and subjugation of the weak and poor who are in the way requires a symbol, or enemy that focuses / justifies the legitimacy of the endeavor.
When all of America celebrated the death of Geronimo a century ago they were celebrating the “winning” of the west… They were celebrating the no holds bard land grab that promised anything you could take and defend from the Indians with your gun. And at one point the US government even paid people almost a year’s wages for the scalp of an Indian man or half wages for a Indian women or child you brought in. (50 million indigenous americans lost their lives from when we first set sail to the new world to “settle the west”)
In the same way today when we celebrate the death of Bin Laden we in truth are more accurately celebrating the “winning” of the middle-east for near absolute control of oil fields, pipelines and mineral rights, as well as more justification for Israel to continue to take more and more land that does not belong to them…
Meanwhile China is making 10 times the economic inroads / opportunities for exploitation in the middle east when compared to the West. Perhaps soon 2/3rds of the world’s population in Asia and SE Asia will turn on the west?
