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'Geronimo' Code Name for bin Laden Mission Sparks Controversy

   VOA News  May 05, 2011
   The famed Indian warrior Geronimo, a Chiricahua Apache, posing with a
   rifle in 1887

Photo: AP

   This photo, provided by the National Archives, shows the famed Indian
   warrior Geronimo, a Chiricahua Apache, posing with a rifle in 1887.
   Historians say that many of the legends surrounding Geronimo are more
   myth than reality.

   U.S. lawmakers are set to discuss the government's use of "Geronimo,"
   the name of a legendary Native American warrior, as code for the raid
   targeting Osama bin Laden.
   The U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is holding a hearing on
   racist stereotypes Thursday, which was scheduled before the bin Laden
   operation, and will now also address the Geronimo issue.
   The association of the 19th century Apache leader's name with the head
   of the al-Qaida terrorist group has drawn criticism from Native
   Americans.
   The real Geronimo is viewed in Native American history as a hero for
   resisting Mexican and U.S. troops trying to expand into tribal lands.
   In a letter to President Barack Obama Tuesday, the chairman of the Fort
   Sill Apache Tribe, Jeff Houser, called the government's equating of the
   warrior with a "mass murderer" and terrorist "painful and offensive" to
   all Native Americans, and requested a formal apology.
   The president of the National Congress of American Indians, Jefferson
   Keel, said the association "is not an accurate reflection of history"
   and undermines the military service of Native people. The statement
   said 61 American Indians and Alaskan Natives have been killed in
   Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, and another 445 wounded.
   The Defense Department said the use of the name meant "no disrespect"
   to Native Americans.
   Born in 1829, Geronimo fought U.S. and Mexican armies for years in an
   effort to protect his land, his people and their way of life. In 1886,
   he surrendered with other warriors to an American general near the
   Arizona-New Mexico border. Geronimo was eventually sent to Fort Sill in
   the state of Oklahoma where he died of pneumonia in 1909.
   American paratroopers began using the term "Geronimo" as a war cry
   during World War II when jumping out of an airplane.

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