It has always amazed me that every red-blooded American
(i.e., white man) seems to have heard this phrase and that most of us think
it’s somehow funny. I guess that is because many of us are the spiritual
descendants of Sheridan, who along with his former Civil War comrade William
Tecumseh Sherman carried out America’s genocidal solution to our “Indian
problem”.
When something is “good”, it is often accompanied by other
things that are “better” and “best”. To America the only good Indian may be a
dead Indian, but a better Indian is one who helps America kill other Indians. And
the best Indian of all is one who forgives America for killing his children,
raping his wife, stealing his possessions, exterminating his people, and
eradicating his way of life.
As it was then, so it is now. Everywhere the evil spirit of
America travels, we seek better Indians to help us kill the other Indians. That
was the strategy of our forefathers during the French and Indian Wars and
subsequent westward expansion, when they would arm one Indian tribe and turn
them loose to attack another. That was our strategy in Iraq, where General
Petraeus armed the warring Sunni and Shia militias to help them kill each other.
That’s our strategy in Afghanistan, where “better Indian” Hamid Karzai helps us
murder his countrymen. That’s also our strategy in Syria, where we are arming
so-called insurgents and encouraging them to attack the troops of a legitimate
government. America loves this strategy because it always works. We usually can
find pent-up hatreds to exploit, and when we cannot it’s quite easy to create
them. The strategy is an essential part of what we now call “regime change”.
But finding the very best Indians has always been much more
difficult. It’s a rare person who can ever forgive America for the things we do
to them and who can then willingly adopt our way of life (which for them often
becomes a way of death). We hunted and even sterilized American Indians almost
to the point of extinction, but the survivors have maintained their existence,
their heritage, and their tribal identities. We squandered the lives of our
children and much of our national treasure trying to win the hearts and minds
of the Vietnamese people, but they eventually achieved the independence of
their country and maintained their cultural and national identity. Most people
eventually do push back, and when they do they’re very hard to defeat.
So why do we keep seeking the very best Indians? A
comparison of the fates of the reputed villains of America’s Indian Wars and War
on Terror may be instructive in that regard.
The villains of our final Indian Wars were Chief Sitting
Bull and Chief Crazy Horse, respectively the spiritual inspiration and the
military victor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. The villains of our
War on Terror have been Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, respectively the spiritual inspiration of the 9/11 attacks and one of the chief military antagonists
in our war against the Taliban.
The final Indian Wars began when the United States invaded
and desecrated the Black Hills of the Dakotas in search of yellow gold. According
to Osama bin Laden, he encouraged the attacks which led to the War on Terror
because the United States likewise invaded and desecrated Saudi Arabia in
search of black gold. In both instances, the conflict began when the United
States violated someone’s sovereignty and desecrated their holy places while planning
to steal their material wealth.
At the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, George Custer
(one of Sheridan’s protégés) attacked a large Indian encampment full of many
warriors. However, the objective of his rash attack was to capture the women
and children in the encampment, a clever but somewhat cowardly strategy. He
failed to achieve that objective and was subsequently overwhelmed by the army
of warriors who responded to his sneak attack on their families.
During the attacks of 9/11, the terrorists (bin Laden’s
alleged protégés) attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and
apparently planned to attack the US Capitol or the White House, all of which
were symbols of American power. This also was a somewhat clever but cowardly
strategy, in that almost all of the victims were non-combatants and unable to
defend themselves. It’s worth noting that both Custer’s attack and the attacks
of 9/11 were sneak attacks which targeted non-combatants.
The fates of all these villains (to date) have been quite
similar. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were killed in cowardly fashion during
separate scuffles while being taken into custody. Both were unarmed at the time
of their deaths. Osama bin Laden was murdered during a nighttime raid on his
home by US Special Forces, and his body was allegedly ignominiously dumped in
the ocean. The available evidence suggests that he was unarmed at the time of
his death and that the only shots fired that night were from US forces.
I have
no doubt that Mullah Omar will someday meet a similar fate. Anyone who beats
the United States in even a single action, fairly or otherwise, can expect to
be murdered in return. Remember what happened to Admiral Yamamoto, the chief
architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? He was killed in a cowardly
wartime assassination when US P-38 Lightning interceptor planes shot down a
lightly armed bomber in which he was riding.
In contrast Custer, whose
gold-seeking, treaty-violating expedition into the Black Hills was a chief cause of the Indian
Wars which led to his death, was buried with full honors in the cemetery of the
US Military Academy at West Point.
I think we continue to seek the very best Indians because we
desperately want to be forgiven for the horrible things we have done, but we cannot face
or even voice our guilt. As suggested by the two examples above, we are an aggressor
instead of a peacemaker, we disguise greed as righteousness, we pretend that
cowardice is valor, and we refuse to ever admit that we could be wrong. Deep
down we know that God is not going to forgive us for what we are doing, so we demand
the coerced forgiveness of our victims instead and call it “unconditional
surrender”.
But only the very best Indians will ever do that for us again.
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