Name the Target

[dieseltaylor]

As I am totally unimpressed with Geronimo I wondered how one could offend more people with carefully chosen codes. I am excluding the opportunity to use neutral words like Arctic as it seems alien to the military mind. But I am not the only one:

Jeff Houser, Fort Sill Apache Tribal Chairman, said equating the legendary Apache to a mass murderer was painful and offensive to all Native Americans.

The commando team that attacked and killed the al-Qaeda leader used the name Geronimo in its progress reports.

The US Defence Department said no disrespect had been intended.

It would not elaborate on the use of the name Geronimo, but said its code names were usually chosen at random.

As the DoD say they are chosen randomly it makes me wonder two things:

a] it is a very short list they choose from

b] it is all possible words and this was just unlucky coincidence

and in either case we don't give a blind **** if it may offend.

So drawing back from something obvious like Mandela, or Pope, and I can see why Obama and Osama had to be avoided what names do you think would be most likely to offend?

I assume there are contractual reasons why you cannot use names like Popeye ... Adolf might have been wrong..

[Vanir Ausf B]

I agree that in the lexicon of politically incorrect code names Geronimo is rather weak. I could think of a dozen better ones off the top of my head, some of which may get me banned.

BTW, I'm pretty sure Geronimo was the code name for the mission. bin Ladin's code name was Jackpot, so the outrage seems misplaced.

Then again, Native Americans own and operate a lot of gambling casinos...

[dieseltaylor]

The fact that Bin Laden had been killed by US special forces was reported to President Barack Obama on Sunday with the words "Geronimo EKIA" - Enemy Killed In Action.

But US officials have refused to comment on whether this was Bin Laden's code name, or the code name of the operation, or why the name Geronimo was chosen - and may never do so

BBC 3/5/11

Fair point. In that case think of it in both contexts Still seems to suck.

[Affentitten]

What about Charlie Uniform November Tango? That would make the White House press release hard to write?

I've always favoured making military code words more gentle and ridiculous. Would have been much more humiliating if Osama's codename had been Ballerina / Donkey / Gaylord / Bullwinkle

[Vanir Ausf B]

U.S. officials have since said that "Geronimo" was the name of the operation itself and that "Jackpot" was the code word for bin Laden.

Linkythingy

[Vanir Ausf B]

What about Charlie Uniform November Tango? That would make the White House press release hard to write?

I've always favoured making military code words more gentle and ridiculous. Would have been much more humiliating if Osama's codename had been Ballerina / Donkey / Gaylord / Bullwinkle

Or Monkey Tits!

[dieseltaylor]

I think too demeaning names might also be dangerous so favour neutral words. However if freed from deep-thinking its much more fun to demean the enemy

Diaper? Snuffles, Rose, Knob, Panto, Shirley - surely

: )

[Bigduke6]

The Apaches were - with the possible competition of the Seminoles - the toughest Native Americans the whites ever came up against. The Chiricahua Apache, meaning more or less the mountains around the Gadsen purchase, were considered the greatest warriors of the Apache nation - the most skilled trackers, the best shots, the ones that could survive in the desert with a knife and a loin cloth. Geronimo was a war leader of the Chiricahua, which means that when the men went out to fight, he was the one they followed - voluntarily.

That said, it is of course a matter of the historical record that during the time Geronimo was actively fighting the whites, Apache tribesmen in the area killed hundreds if not thousands of whites, and moreover it is inconceivable that Geronimo had nothing to do with that.

Nor were all those deaths soldiers - this was a time when white farmers were murdered on sight, entire farming settlements laid to waste, and yes torture of enemies was something the Apache practiced. This wasn't Dancing With Wolves, both sides committed atrocities and frankly, being less pretentious towards western civilization, the Apaches were better at being vicious.

Geronimo as I understand it had five wives, of whom at least two were "captured". (Which makes him a rapist, by at least modern standards.) He also hid out in the mountains, defied government of the US, and for years was the worst sort of bogeyman for the US military, and it wasn't helping that they couldn't catch him for years.

If you look at the cold hard facts, this is a man responsible for a lot of murders and mayhem against citizens of civilized nations. It is not so easy to say he was just defending his land and nation, for if one is honest, one must concede he was more than anything else fighting for the ancient Apache right to raid and pillage whomever they pleased.

I can understand how some modern people might feel guilty about the genocide conducted against Native Americans. I have a great deal of respect for any one who takes on the US Federal government successfully. I'd count him as one of America's great military leaders. But frankly, for his time Geronimo was more than a little similar to Osama Bin Laden.

It is somewhat ironic that just a hundred years and change after he dies, this same guy Geronimo has morphed into such a popular hero that when his name is used as a code word in an modern modern operation that kills a modern terrorist, there apparently are plenty of people who are ready and willing to get huffy.

Haven't they read the Wiki on Geronimo? Sure the Americans were bad guys too, but this guy was not just a raider and a killer and a kidnapper and probably a rapist too, but he was a person who led others - and successfully too - in raids against peaceful people whom the Apaches frequently massacred.

I'm not trying to say the Apaches started it (although given where they lived and their skills at warfare, I'd believe it if they did), but what gives? Are we really so ignorant of history, that we blithely set up last century's murders as our heroes of today?

I bet OBL reaches Geronimo status a lot more quickly than Geronimo did, what with the public attention span the way it is things move faster these days.

[abneo3sierra]

Along the same line as what BD just said, but also this fact..Geronimo was the target of the first REAL manhunt the US Army conducted, thus its name here, involving probably the largest manhunt in the world's history, is not so out of place if you think about it.

[dieseltaylor]

BD6 - generally I think your posts are spot on but I do find this piece singularly devoid of figures but strong on the assertion that the Apaches killed thousands etc etc. And were cruel/vicious etc. All possibly true but then people defending "their land" and aware of the White's record with Indians no doubt felt that genocide or slavery was effectively what was happening to them.

Perhaps you could provide some figures on Indian deaths by violence and starvation against Whites killed. But lets start here which is just a Google away:

In 1885, one group of 11 Apache braves escaped from a reservation. In four weeks, they traveled more than 1,200 miles, killed 38 people, and captured 250 horses and mules. Army troops pursued them, but they eventually reached safety in Mexico. The government decided on a campaign to bring about the final defeat of the Apache. Soldiers were ordered to "kill every Indian man capable of bearing arms and capture the women and children."

http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/histprof/misc/indianwars.html

Anyway to what I think is the nub of your post:

It is somewhat ironic that just a hundred years and change after he dies, this same guy Geronimo has morphed into such a popular hero that when his name is used as a code word in an modern modern operation that kills a modern terrorist, there apparently are plenty of people who are ready and willing to get huffy.

As far as I know Indians are US citizens and just because they ARE a minority does not mean they cannot have their own different heroes. If the US Army then feels it can equate Geronimo with a vengeance attack on OBL I do think that it is probably offensive and at least insensitive.

[Stalins Organ]

I was thinking of hte code name last night - I cant' help but think that Nazi leader names might have been moer apporpriate

Eg

Adolph - if he had killed himself

Mengele - if he wasn't found

Himmler - if captured alive

Heydrich - if killed in the operation

Whadaya think - should I contract to the US to supply them better code names??

[dieseltaylor]

Quantrill? I think you might say the US army was keen to nail him. There may be others.

BTW as names are apparently assigned at random ... by computer ... do you buy that? : )

[abneo3sierra]

Quantrill? I think you might say the US army was keen to nail him. There may be others.

BTW as names are apparently assigned at random ... by computer ... do you buy that? : )

Names are not issued at random, at least in all cases..I have been in some that were probably random, but also in some that, if random, were just AMAZINGLY well named. As for Quantrill, the manhunt for him was nowhere near that of the Apache leader,which had in effect the entire US Army in the southwest after him.

As a note: I am actually on the side that sees Geronimo as probably a 'freedom fighter' although definitely not an innocent, as both sides of the American-Indian wars committed what anyone now would call war crimes.

[Affentitten]

It is somewhat ironic that just a hundred years and change after he dies, this same guy Geronimo has morphed into such a popular hero that when his name is used as a code word in an modern modern operation that kills a modern terrorist, there apparently are plenty of people who are ready and willing to get huffy.

We have the same thing here with Ned Kelly. Robber, murderer, thief, cop killer. But nowadays he portrayed as some gentle Irish freedom fighter trapped by circumstances and an oppressive colonial state.

[Bigduke6]

DT,

You've made my evening, now I get to hold forth about the Apache Menace.

Here's an episode for you, it's useful as a starting point because it's pretty well documented. It's called "The Battle of Cook's Canyon", and you can find the Wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cooke%27s_Canyon

The short version is that it was 1861 and the Apache nation in what to become south Arizona and New Mexico such as it was considered all whites fair game. I.e., they didn't necessarily kill whites on sight but it was an available option to hunting and war parties. The back history to this status is pretty involved but roughly it was because when Mexico became independent in 1821 the governors of Chihuahua and other northern states stopped paying bribes to the Apaches, which ushered in two generations of Apache raids on Mexican villagers, not that the bribes had stopped all the raids previously.

The whites, meanwhile, hadn't really been a presence because the Texas Republic pretty much let the western frontier go hang, then the Confederates took over and all they were interested was Santa Fe, and so there was no white law whatsover in the Arizona and New Mexico territories. Thus, any one entering lands where Apache were at needed to have very good diplomatic or combat skills, because that was the only protection against Apache attack. Not that every Apache would attack, but any one could pretty much with impunity.

Probably even worse, Apaches being the independent and non-hierarchical lot that they were, bless them, even if a party of whites managed to get through one tribe's area safely, that meant nothing to the next tribe in the next valley. Is this reminding you of the Northwest Frontier and the Pathans yet?

OK, so in 1861 what with the frontier going to heck a wagon train starts off from south Arizona, settlers are quitting, they're giving up their stakes and heading back to the Rio Grande. They get to Tucson, pick up guides including Kit Carson himself, and head east. There's maybe 25 armed men, maybe some women and children, and about 1,500 - 1,800 head of livestock. Not that it made much of a difference, but this particular group was loyal to the Union, as after all the Civil War had just started.

Well, this mass of wagons and livestock is of course a very juicy target even if the whites are doing supposedly what the indians wanted, this was a rare case of the whites LEAVING Native American territory.

(There is room here for a tangent on how the region we are talking about is so unproductive and hostile to humans that the idea of some one actually wanting to own part of it, and so keep others off of it, was probably pretty ludicrous at the time. Think Bedouin in the Sahara, there are people that live in these hostile lands but its not like they live off them. Rather, their livelihood depends on taxing wealthier people passing through, or failing that raiding adjacent territories where agriculture is reasonably possible.)

So anyway, the Apaches get together a raiding party of maybe 100 including the war chiefs Magnas Colorado and Cochise, and when the wagon train get's to Cook's Canyon in New Mexico territory in August the Apaches hit it with an ambush. The whites circle the wagons just like in the movies, a firefight ensues, and by the end of the day 4 whites are dead and 8 more are hit. The Apaches remove whatever wounded and dead on their side, and more than half the livestock.

So couple of days later a group of Arizona militia, interestingly enough loyal to the Confederacy, intercepts the Apache band because they have all the livestock they could possibly want and they're moving slowly. The fight takes place near the Florida Mountains near Mexico, supposedly eight Apaches killed and no white losses. Livestock is scattered, the surviving Apaches run.

So end of story, right? Well no, the Apaches have lost their loot, they don't want to go back to their women empty-handed. They're still mad. So do these noble savages go home or hunt buffalo or have some visions in a sweat lodge or ride off into the sunset? They do not.

These particular warriors, led by war chiefs that were the heroes the Apaches talked about when Geronimo was growing up a generation later, they return to the Cook's Canyon region. Which, as it happens, is not empty howling wilderness but lightly settled with ranchers and farmers and sheepherders and so forth.

Then these Apaches - meaning primarily the raiding parties now turned into war parties because the white Confederates dared to ambush them - start robbing and then mutilating and killing whites, wherever they can reach them, basically for the rest of the summer.

The estimate is that 150 US citizens, and 600 Mexican citizens, died at the hands of Apaches before Fall. Say over the course of 2-3 months. Consider the size of the populations and density of settlement in the region, think of what you would think about Apaches if you were a white person within 500 miles of those territories.

This was just one summer of the Apache Wars, and frankly only a portion of the entire territory. This is just one episode, just better documented than most.

Obviously, I am not arguing every single Apache was a thief and murderer, no the old men weren't nor the women nor the little children. But the Apaches had little agriculture and worse land, and they had been expanding for at least three centuries precisely because they were better fighters than any one they came up against. So naturally they were raiders, and that meant they stole and murdered.

Now, perhaps there are enlightened nations that might have figured out a way to strike a peaceful relationship with the Apache. After all, the Chinese did pretty good buying off the Mongolian tribes for quite a while. The Spaniards and the Mexicans actually tried bribes, but they never had the resources - you need a functional government capable of collecting taxes efficiently; this has always been difficult for them.

But the Anglo-Saxons were different, they knew how to collect resources and focus them against their enemies. Frankly, it seems to me the Anglo-Saxons paid the Apache back in their own coin.

The standard history on how the whites performed this undeniable act of genocide is: The Conquest of Apacheria by Dan L. Thrapp.

If you want more general numbers, you can find another interesting account here:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataques_apaches_a_M%C3%A9xico

Which is of course in Spanish but then rightfully so, after all the Apaches lived on BOTH sides of the border and yes they were quite skilled at exploiting the border to get away from whichever whites happened to be chasing them at the moment.

You asked for numbers, here are some:

- From 1771 and 1776 Apaches killed 1674 people living in the district of Nueva Vizcaya alone; this is not counting soldiers, travelers, and captives.

- Over a six year period in the 1790s Apaches led by the war chiefs Rafael and José Antonio raided north along the Rio Grande to territories near Santa Fe, and as far south as Durango. 300 people killed, dozens of kidnappings, huge property losses.

- 1831, new Mexican government has failed completely to reach any kind of pay off mechanism to the Apache, and as a result their raids run off or kill practically every peon and landowner in Chihuahua province, and some of the raids come right up to the walls of Chihuahua city itself.

- 1845, Mexican government has had some success controlling Apache raids by paying a substantial bounty on Apache scalps. This however backfires in September-October when the Apaches retaliate by organizing war parties a good deal bigger than the normal 50-100 warriors. 100 whites killed over the two months, "not a horse left" in Chihuahua province, Sonora province is in waste, raiders reach the center of Durango province. Raids are finally halted when the Mexicans agree to pay bribes to the Apaches.

- 1856, Mexican government is deteriorating and most provinces are made autonomous, meaning the central government will spend much less money and troops to help them. This reduces payments to the Apaches and so spikes the raiding. Durango province is particularly hit, in November three outposts/villages are overrun with 34, 102, and 68 persons killed by Apache raiders.

The Cook's Canyon fighting and massacres take place a few years thereafter.

The bottom line is, both sides were vicious and brutal, equally. The fable about the heroic whites fending off the barbaric Indians is just as silly as the noble red men defending their lands and traditions against the money-grubbing lying whites. It was just people robbing and killing, both ways. There is no rule that says that, in a war, one side always must be good. Sometimes they're both bad.

As to Indian deaths by starvation, certainly there were more. However, I don't think those numbers would have meant much to the Mexican peasants or poor white homesteaders that were the most common targets of the Apache raids. Nor am I convinced that, when it comes to the Apaches, there were more of them killed by all means, than the net sum of their own enemies that they did in. After all, the Apaches were great racial purists, they hated and raided the Anglo-Saxons, the Mexicans, and the Navajo and the Pima and the Pueblo and the Comanche equally. The Comanche aside the other Native Americans had little chance against the Apache; which is one of the reasons the Apache nation managed to grow in such hostile territory: all the other Indian tribes were an ideal source of Apache wives and slaves.

As to OBL's possible similarity to Geronimo, I admit I'm being facetious, but still.

Think about it. Fought the superpower, killed the white people with unconventional tactics, a sociopath at least by the standards of his enemies, a hero to his people, inspired attacks by his supporters leading to the deaths of hundreds of his opponents, spent years hiding in mountains and badlands, took advantages of borders, and demonized as the worst sort of monster by the people who hunted him down. Had long hair. Knew how to exploit the media. The list could go on for quite a while.

My real point is, Geronimo was not some kind of mythological nice guy with perfect teeth and loved by domestic animals and small children alike. He was an Apache war party leader, a great war leader at that, with all the viciousness and brutality that implies. He kidnapped women and was responsible for the murder of hundreds of civilians. To pretend otherwise is to deny history, and I think that is always a bad idea.

[gunnergoz]

Brilliant, BD6.

History is seldom as clean and obvious as we would like it to be.

(Silly me - I thought "geronimo" was a tribute to the WW2 paratrooper battle cry.)

I can't be sure that whomever picked the code word was thinking along your line of reasoning, but it makes far more sense than my first interpretation.

[Bigduke6]

I have several theories on picking the code name:

- The guy picking to code name was a member of the US "airborne" community, meaning those soldiers and officers who have jumped out airplanes or helicopters, usually by parachute, and think that the acme of soldiering is being an "airborne soldier". "Geronimo" is an homage to airborne soldiers.

- The guy picking the code name was either a special forces soldier or a person who thinks special forces are way cool, and one of the ways special forces are cool is they don't have to obey a lot of the rules the regular forces do, and in this particular case the rule not being obeyed is that code names eventually will become public knowledge, and so must be politically correct.

The special forces likes to remind itself it doesn't have to do that sort of thing, and giving OBL a code name that was the name of a US Native American resistance leader (well the name the Mexicans thought up for him actually) was just that, the special forces telling themselves they are cool and different.

- The person picking the code name was a US Western history buff and inclined to black humor and irony. For whatever reason he was aware of the US government hunt for the historical Geronimo, and he thought there were enough parallels for it would be entertaining to give the same name to OBL. Low probability but not impossible.

I don't believe the name was randomly picked out of a hat.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Just to be clear, as far as I know only the names of operations are ever computer generated. "Neptune Spear" certainly sounds generic enough to have been random.

[abneo3sierra]

Neptune Spear would imply a SEAL team operation as their badge is of course the Neptune Trident.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I did some reading and it appears my memory has failed me.

The UK does use a computer to pick theirs randomly. This is what I was thinking of.

The US uses a computer database that assigns a range of possible words to various commands, but the final decision on what to use within that range is made by that command. So yeah, it could be a reference to the SEAL emblem.

[gunnergoz]

Building on what Bigduke6 contribued:

If Delta Force (SF/Rangers) was involved, the "geronimo" code name may well have been one of their contributions. I've heard there were some Delta guys on the team. After all, the SEALs probably got to name the op "Neptune's Spear" and so the leftover code for success got to be picked by Delta. But I wonder who got to pick the "awsh!t" code word if they failed to find Bin Laden and what it would have been...160th Special Operations Squadron; maybe "Hoffa?" (They never found him, either.)