INTERESTING STORY

INTERESTING STORY

Mistress Gatta • 30 באוג׳ 2004

Interesting history of an earlier Jihad. .

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> Most Americans probably think the Islamic terrorists declared war on the
> United States Sept. 11, 2001. Actually, it started a long time
> before--right from the birth of the nation. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson,
> John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were commissioned by the first Congress
> to assemble in Paris to see about marketing U.S. products in Europe.
> Jefferson quickly surmised that the biggest challenge facing U.S.
> merchant ships were those referred to euphemistically as "Barbary
> pirates."
> They weren't "pirates" at all, in the traditional sense, Jefferson
> noticed. They didn't drink and chase women and they really weren't out
> to strike it rich. Instead, their motivation was strictly religious.
> They bought and sold slaves, to be sure. They looted ships. But they
> used their booty to buy guns, ships, cannon and ammunition. Like those
> we call "terrorists" today, they saw themselves engaged in jihad and
> called themselves "mujahiddin."
> Why did these 18th-century terrorists represent such a grave threat to
> U.S. merchant ships? With independence from Great Britain, the former
> colonists lost the protection of the greatest navy in the world. The
> U.S. had no navy--not a single warship. Jefferson inquired of his
> European hosts how they dealt with the problem. He was stunned to find
> out that France and England both paid tribute to the fiends--who would,
> in turn, use the money to expand their own armada, buy more weaponry,
> hijack more commercial ships, enslave more innocent civilians and demand
> greater ransom.
> This didn't make sense to Jefferson. He recognized the purchase of peace
> from the Muslims only worked temporarily. They would always find an
> excuse to break an agreement, blame the Europeans and demand higher
> tribute. After three months researching the history of militant Islam,
> he came up with a very different policy to deal with the terrorists. But
> he didn't get to implement until years later. As the first secretary of
> state, Jefferson urged the building of a navy to rescue American
> hostages held in North Africa and to deter future attacks on U.S. ships.
> In 1792, he commissioned John Paul Jones to go to Algiers under the
> guise of diplomatic negotiations, but with the real intent of sizing up
> a future target of a naval attack. Jefferson was ready to retire a year
> later when what could only be described as "America's first Sept.11"
> happened. America was struck with its first mega-terror attack by
> jihadists.
> In the fall of 1793, the Algerians seized 11 U.S. merchant ships and
> enslaved more than 100 Americans. When word of the attack reached New
> York, the stock market crashed. Voyages were canceled in every major
> port. Seamen were thrown out of work. Ship suppliers went out of
> business. What Sept. 11 did to the U.S. economy in 2001, the mass
> shipjacking of 1793 did to the fledgling U.S. economy in that year.
> Accordingly, it took the U.S. Congress only four months to decide to
> build a fleet of warships. But even then, Congress didn't choose war, as
> Jefferson prescribed. Instead, while building what would become the U.S.
> Navy, Congress sent diplomats to reason with the Algerians. The U.S.
> ended up paying close to $1 million and giving the pasha of Algiers a
> new warship, "The Crescent," to win release of 85 surviving American
> hostages.
> It wasn't until 1801, under the presidency of Jefferson, that the U.S.
> engaged in what became a four-year war against Tripoli. And it wasn't
> until 1830, when France occupied Algiers, and later Tunisia and Morocco,
> that the terrorism on the high seas finally ended. France didn't leave
> North Africa until 1962--and it quickly became a major base of terrorism
> once again.

(What follows is the opinion of someone earliewr in tbis email chain who may be right.)
> What's the moral of the story? Appeasement never works. Jefferson saw
> it. Sept. 11 was hardly the beginning. The war in which we fight today
> is the longest conflict in human history. It's time to learn from
> history, not repeat its mistakes.

Ahem...

Dan_Kap​(שולט){f,yt,D,תכ} • 2 בספט׳ 2004

Is it possible that tthose barbary pirates were responding to the acts performed by the same nations by kidnapping and enslaving people who happened to belong to a diferent race?

Let's not forget that those very nations were quite busy getting African slaves to work for their colonies...

Seems to me more like reading the phone directory or the bible for signs of September 11th...

Under the same line of reading, China and its response to the Opium Wars should be considered a terrorist nation, shouldn't it?

Getting some more facts

Dan_Kap​(שולט){f,yt,D,תכ} • 2 בספט׳ 2004

Here is what one US source has to say abouth the two Barbary Wars:-

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The first Barbary War
...
Legacy of war
In many ways, the First Barbary War did not meet its implicit goals. It did not, in fact, end America's position of tributary to the Barbary pirates. In fact, part of the treaty of 1805 was an agreement to pay ransom for sailors taken hostage by Algiers—part of the reason it took so long for the Senate to ratify. The Barbary states emerged relatively unscathed. For them, the First Barbary War was one in a series of punitive wars that signalled their weakened status and foreshadowed eventual colonialization by France, starting in the 1830s.

For the United States, however, it was an important campaign. America's military command and war mechanism had been up to that time relatively untested. The First Barbary War proved that America could execute a war far from home, and that American forces had the cohesion to fight together as Americans rather than Georgians or New Yorkers. The United States Navy and Marines became a permanent part of the American government and the American mythos, and Decatur returned to the US as its first post-Revolutionary war hero. The war also forced the pacifist President Jefferson to reevaluate the importance of military might in making the United States a world power. In some ways, America's success during the First Barbary War made the nation overly confident in its own ability—a confidence made manifest in the War of 1812.

The more immediate problem of Barbary piracy, however, was not fully settled. By 1807, Algiers had gone back to taking American ships and seamen hostage. Distracted by the preludes to the War of 1812, the Americans were unable to respond to the provocation until 1815, with the Second Barbary War.

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The second Barbary War

The Second Barbary War (1815, also known as the Algerian War) was one of two wars fought between the United States of America and the semi-autonomous North African city-states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, known collectively as the Barbary States. It brought to a conclusive end the American practice of paying tribute to the pirate states.

After its victory in the First Barbary War (1801–1805), the attention of the United States had been diverted to its worsening relationship with France and United Kingdom, culminating in the War of 1812. The unchastened Barbary pirate states took this opportunity to return to their practice of attacking American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea and holding the crew and officers for ransom. Unable to devote military resources and political will to the situation, the United States quietly recommenced paying ransom for return of prisoners.

The expulsion of American vessels from the Mediterranean during the War of 1812 by the British navy further emboldened the brigandine nations. The Dey of Algiers expelled the US consul general Tobias Lear and declared war on the United States for failing to pay its required tribute. Since there were no American vessels in the region at this time, the challenge went unheeded.

At the conclusion of the War of 1812, however, America could once again turn its sights on North Africa. On March 3, 1815 the US Congress authorized deployment of naval power against Algiers, and a force of ten ships was dispatched under the command of Commodores Stephen Decatur, Jr. and William Bainbridge--both heroes of the first war.

Decatur and Bainbridge used the pirates' tactics against them. Taking hundreds of prisoners in an attack on Algiers, Decatur bargained for a treaty releasing the United States from any tribute obligations in perpetuity, as well as $10,000 in reparations for damages to the US. By June 30, 1815 the treaty was signed and the threat of Barbary pirates to American vessels was at an end.

No sooner had Decatur set off for Tunis to enforce a similar agreement than the Dey repudiated the treaty. The next year, an Anglo-Dutch fleet, commanded by British admiral Viscount Exmouth, delivered a punishing, nine-hour bombardment of Algiers. The attack immobilized many of the dey's corsairs and obtained from him a second treaty that reaffirmed the conditions imposed by Decatur. In addition, the dey agreed to end the practice of enslaving Christians.


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Links:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Tripolitan-War
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Second-Barbary-War

As it reads to me, it seems more likely that the practice of Barbary Piracies, and their end had more to do with the interestes of the European nations against the young USA and with slavery than with terrorism....[/b]