University of Virginia Library

No Time For Custer

The Wounded Knee Indian uprising may
strike us as an ironic joke at first, and indeed
it does have the elements of a historical
anomaly. It is a confrontation between the
red men and the white men on a piece of
territory for which the Indians fought to the
death in 1890, now repeated with National
Guardsmen, hostages, and an embattled
trading post.

We are somewhat detached
observers, to be sure, but we detect a trend
here which has gotten somewhat out of hand
during the past years.

The trend is toward violence and
kidnapping as a means of bargaining with the
government; a dangerous form of extortion
where innocent people are the currency of the
transaction.

One reaction is of the knee-jerk "Custer:
Now More than Ever" variety. This hard-line
approach will not work, even when the
perpetrators are unquestionably in the wrong,
because they invariably promise to die if not
appeased. Is it fair to contribute to the deaths
of the innocent hostages in order to teach
potential terrorists a lesson?

The opposite reaction, to immediately
grant whatever the insurgents demand, is
equally dangerous, in that it is likely that
success in such an irresponsible action merely
breeds emulation by others–often those with
no cause but their own fame, or notoriety.

As unsatisfying as it is, there really is only
one way out–and that is the route of
negotiations with the extortionists in each
peculiar case.

If this were an isolated case, it would not
be worth mention. But terror as a means of
extracting promises and agreements has
become a way of life today, so we should
have the intellectual framework available in
which we can consider the cases which arise.
The morals of pitting individuals' lives against
the ultimate good of society enter into the
decision of everyone responsible to make
immediate decisions, from the New Orleans
police chief to the FBI. If there is no way to
deal with terrorism through negotiation, then
maybe the Custers of the world will have the
last word. But, for now, we should unite in
unbending disdain for such actions, and wish
the good guys luck at Wounded Knee.