Geronimo and Bin Laden. Before Geronimo became an expression of daring and courage for paratroopers and could be used for special operations by the military such as the targetting of Bin Laden, it was the name given to a Chiricahua Apache (1829–1909) who resisted the land encroachments by Mexico and United States. I’m reading the wiki. A Christian name indicating fear among the Mexicans he was attacking (“saint Jerome, have mercy” or the like?). Revenge attacks. He surrendered to US soldiers after an intense, costly search. Is that the difference? Geronimo was kept a prisoner until his death, supposedly became a Christian, was exhibited, and was buried in the prisoner of war cemetery of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It became a movie in 1939. Paratroopers watched the movie and used the name as a cry meant to demonstrate courage, goes the story.

Bin Laden = Geronimo? Both reacting vengefully against the stealing and demeaning of their worlds? No, impossible equation for those who think of the US as the fount and acme of *world* civilization. Geronimo was carrying out a personal vendetta, a matter of honor. He was slightly crazed and perverse at the time, but we understand that and can steal his memory after we stole everything else, and reshape it as we see fit. While Bin Laden, that is another matter, he was not slightly crazed, he was completely demented to go after “civilization” itself (the US). It could not be revenge he was after, like the Apache chief, a thing we understand and can make our own after a fashion. What could he be avenging? Humiliation? Exploitation? Hadn’t the US / civilization been good to all of the oil-producing countries, and didn’t the Bin Ladens profit from it? Wasn’t the US helping with its calls for a more humane world? Yes the US had troops in the Persian Gulf and even in Saudi Arabia, but was it at fault for that? Surely not. It simply was going along, developing more sophisticated, leveraged means of payment for oil and other wealth, an ever more complex way of paying “the fair price” for essential resources.

Bin Laden’s body buried at sea, from a warship. With a US Muslim chaplain saying the requisite prayers? Filmed presumably. No burial place to come to, no relics, *damnatio memoriae* of a sort. Old way by states of disposing of dangerous symbols: the Roman Empire regarding Jesus, for instance. Not that Jesus’ and Bin Laden’s hopes and methods can be compared, since one called for forgiveness and the other for all out war, including committing atrocities against non-combattants. From the imperial or state’s point of view, however, the positions of such enemies don’t matter, they are dangerous by themselves and especially as potential symbols. So, execution is deemed necessary, demeaning if possible (but US as a modern state can’t do the crucifixion bit since Constantine) and absence of a tomb and relics. The last part is important: no relics! Another example: the Christian martyrs of Lyons in 177, from a crazed group of believers from Phrygia (foreigners), whose bodies were burnt after their killing and the resulting ashes thrown into the Rhone river. See Eusebius, *Church History* 5.1.62 (ET by Kirsopp Lake, LCL):

Further on they say: “Thus the bodies of the martyrs, after having been exposed and insulted in every way for six days, and afterwards burned and turned to ashes, were swept by the wicked into the river Rhone which flows near by, that not even a relic of them might still appear upon the earth.

It didn’t prevent the collection of relics, which washed up on an island, that story goes, and were commemorated by a later church/abbey foundation (St Martin d’Ainay in Lyons).