On the Capitulation of Obama's "Operation Geronimo"

Born in 1829, Goyaałé was a Chiricahua Apache warrior who fought against Mexico – whose soldiers killed his wife, children, and mother – and the United States during what is now known as the Apache Wars.

The story goes that "Geronimo" earned his name from Mexican soldiers, whose bullets he defied by attacking them with a knife. In terror, the soldiers cried out to Saint Jerome ("Jeronimo!"). The name stuck, as did fear of the man. So much so that the U.S. Army sent an entire troop to capture him. He became a prisoner of war in 1886, incarcerated first in Florida, then Alabama, and then Oklahoma. He died of pneumonia in Oklahoma in 1909.

U.S. President Barak Obama, as Commander in Chief, approved the naming of the Navy Seal Team Six mission to kill Osama Bin Laden “Operation Geronimo.” They used “Geronimo” specifically to refer to Bin Laden, who they claimed was like Geronimo in his ability to avoid capture. When Bin Laden was identified visually, and Team Six moved in, the commander of the team cried, “For God and country, Geronimo! Geronimo! Geronimo!"

A Reality Check

In 2008, I supported Obama’s candidacy for the Office of the President (financially even, for the first time in my life, contributing to the election campaign).

I celebrated Obama’s win – symbolically because of its defeat of everything that Bush/Cheney represented, but literally because I honestly believed that he would bring real change to the White House.

I was encouraged to continue to believe by Obama’s immediate call to close Guantanamo Bay prison within the year and his policy declaration that the U.S. would no longer engage in torture; his lifting of the ban on federal funding for international organizations that perform/provide abortions; his passage of legislation making it easier for workers to sue for pay discrimination; his reversal of Bush’s ban on federally funded embryonic stem cell research; his allowance of Cuban Americans to transfer money and visit relatives in Cuba.

But then… there was Obama’s bailout of corrupted and criminal big banks; his continuing of Bush/Cheney war strategies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; his much compromised health care reform bill to the health industry; his international call to suspend nuclear armament while arguing that the future must include nuclear power; his promise to prosecute CIA employees for harsh interrogation techniques while he suspended the appointment of an independent commission to investigate those crimes; his refusal to call Turkey’s genocide of Armenians “genocide”; his signing of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples with a provision that it would have no legal force; his appointment of big bank and big oil leaders in prominent positions with responsibilities to oversee their own businesses. All while – I might add – Obama dismantled the community-based movement that got him elected in the first place and to whom he had promised to remain accountable while in office. And since as he has refused to take a proactive position on the wave of anti-union, anti-collective bargaining rights sweeping across the United States, even as he promised during his campaign to stand up for labor.

The truly radical economic reform needed in this country is one that includes a fair, equitable tax responsibility for the rich and their corporations, including banks and oil. I see no evidence of Obama supporting this.

Capitulation

I don’t want to contribute to the right-wing, conservative, uncritical tirade against Obama that floods the internet and cable news. I voted for him 2008, I will vote for him again. It's not about that.

But this whole “Operation Geronimo” thing makes obvious what has been the case all along.

Bin Laden and Geronimo have nothing in common. Bin Laden was a multimillionaire fundamentalist radical with international support and complicity in terror. Geronimo was a poor, relatively isolated Apache warrior fighting against Mexican and U.S. colonial forces that were murdering, enslaving, raping, and stealing the land of Apache people. And Geronimo was most certainly captured and incarcerated.

The uncritical, stupid comparison of these two men is an instance of Obama’s repeated capitulations to other interests. He could have insisted on another name. He could have assumed some leadership and care in what a targeted assassination mission would be called now and in the history books. Instead, he gave in to the Navy Seal Team Six to appease their “raw-raw” proclivities and encourage their bravado as they “went into battle."

These are leadership choices. They are bad leadership choices.