Saturday, May 07, 2011

"Geronimo"?... A Freudian slip?


David Seaton's News Links
The code name the SEALs gave Osama bin Laden, "Geronimo", gives the game away... Freudian slip, I guess. This is a story that goes way way back... really it is just the dark side of the new technologies that makes it different. 

As we hear all the time, these are tools which "empower" people. If the technologies had existed back then, Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would probably have attacked New York and Washington and the Zulus might have trashed London. 

Today we live 21rst century imperialism and it reads a little bit like a cross between Arthur C. Clark and Rudyard Kipling... on LSD. The only thing that gives this all a special taste is America's endless hypocrisy... like Al Capone nattering on about "values" and "that's not who we are".... Yes, in fact, that is "who we are" and we must schlepp the karma. Al Qaeda is just  part of that karma.

There are all sorts of "natives" that have resisted imperial oppression, we could as easily speak of Tipu Sultan as Crazy Horse, but Native-Americans like Sitting Bull and Geronimo are better known to Americans than the Fuzzy-Wuzzys. Most of them were killed or imprisoned and the people who did so were sure they deserved to be. Osama bin Laden was simply -- up till today -- the most wildly successful "native" in history in inflicting pain on his imperial adversaries and probably over time, that is how he will be seen. He showed it could be done... he could be called the Wright Brothers of anti-imperial terrorism.

What will the future bring?

If we keep sticking our noses into other people's affairs, economies, religious practices and local arguments, you can be sure that sooner than later, much, much, worse things than 9/11 will occur on American soil. DS

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