H-E-B Center at Cedar Park
Code Name Unfortunate
RECEIVED Wed., May 4, 2011
Dear Editor,
I just read the following in a news report regarding the successful raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound:
"'We've ID'd Geronimo,' said a disembodied voice, using the agreed-upon code name for America's most wanted enemy, Osama bin Laden. Word then came that Geronimo had been killed."
Afterward, I felt instant sadness and disgust at the choice of Geronimo as the code name for bin Laden. Chief Geronimo and his legacy certainly have nothing in common with that of 9/11's dark designer.
Why not a designation so off-the-wall that it did not matter, like "Blight" or "Bane"? But the choice of this specific code name cannot be deemed random. If this isn't an obvious ethnic slur, conscious or unconscious, I could not easily conjure a riper example.
While I'm not a politically correct person by a long stretch, I believe the White House and the national security establishment owe a huge apology to the Americans already homesteaded here when the mercantile Europeans tripped over them.
Further, our 21st century leaders ironically seem thus far in lockstep about equating America's contemporary role in international affairs as akin to playing "cowboys and Indians." As this tragic code name choice surely cements itself into American lore, it will symbolize to future generations the confused hypocritical delirium into which American thought had lapsed at the point that American civilization accelerated toward a calamitous finale.
I just read the following in a news report regarding the successful raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound:
"'We've ID'd Geronimo,' said a disembodied voice, using the agreed-upon code name for America's most wanted enemy, Osama bin Laden. Word then came that Geronimo had been killed."
Afterward, I felt instant sadness and disgust at the choice of Geronimo as the code name for bin Laden. Chief Geronimo and his legacy certainly have nothing in common with that of 9/11's dark designer.
Why not a designation so off-the-wall that it did not matter, like "Blight" or "Bane"? But the choice of this specific code name cannot be deemed random. If this isn't an obvious ethnic slur, conscious or unconscious, I could not easily conjure a riper example.
While I'm not a politically correct person by a long stretch, I believe the White House and the national security establishment owe a huge apology to the Americans already homesteaded here when the mercantile Europeans tripped over them.
Further, our 21st century leaders ironically seem thus far in lockstep about equating America's contemporary role in international affairs as akin to playing "cowboys and Indians." As this tragic code name choice surely cements itself into American lore, it will symbolize to future generations the confused hypocritical delirium into which American thought had lapsed at the point that American civilization accelerated toward a calamitous finale.
Richard Summers
