Some people think the attacks by Al Qaida in NYC, D.C., and Shanksville, PA are the start of this war. Some people think the attacks on US embassies in Africa, and the attack off the Yemen coast on the USS Cole during the Clinton presidency are the start of this war. Some people think the attack on a marine barracks in Beirut during the Reagan presidency is the start of this war. I think the war started in the late ‘70’s. Christopher Hitchens wrote an article recently about this. There is also more interesting historical background information here.
In the late ‘70’s American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. The United States had therefore to decide not just upon a question of national honor but upon whether it would stand or fall by free navigation of the seas. The United States is faced with corrupt regimes, on the one hand, and Islamic militants, on the other—or indeed a collusion between them.
Of course I’m talking about July 4, 1776 being the start of attacks and war by Muslim terrorists on America. It was debated by our Founding Fathers as they wrote the US Constitution. More excerpts from Hitch:
“However that may be, it is certain that the Barbary question had considerable influence on the debate that ratified the United States Constitution in the succeeding years. Many a delegate, urging his home state to endorse the new document, argued that only a strong federal union could repel the Algerian threat. In The Federalist No. 24, Alexander Hamilton argued that without a “federal navy . . . of respectable weight . . . the genius of American Merchants and Navigators would be stifled and lost.” In No. 41, James Madison insisted that only union could guard America’s maritime capacity from “the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians.” John Jay, in his letters, took a “bring-it-on” approach; he believed that “Algerian Corsairs and the Pirates of Tunis and Tripoli” would compel the feeble American states to unite, since “the more we are ill-treated abroad the more we shall unite and consolidate at home.” The eventual Constitution, which provides for an army only at two-year renewable intervals, imposes no such limitation on the navy.”
There were many Americans—John Adams among them—who made the case that it was better policy to pay the tribute. It was cheaper than the loss of trade, for one thing, and a battle against the pirates would be “too rugged for our people to bear.” Putting the matter starkly, Adams said: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.”
Some of the stuff coming out in these debates between Massachusetts politicians vs Virginia politicians are much like the debates we hear today. John Adams as the POTUS went along with paying the ‘protection money’, and when Jefferson became POTUS foreign policy changed. Jefferson and Adams had been confronted with the Muslim terrorists as envoys meeting with Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March, 1785. Here’s how Hitch describes the encounter:
When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)
Ambassador Abd Al-Rahman did not fail to mention the size of his own commission, if America chose to pay the protection money demanded as an alternative to piracy.
At one point, Jefferson hoped that John Paul Jones, naval hero of the Revolution, might assume command of a squadron that would strike fear into the Barbary pirates. While ambassador in Paris, Jefferson had secured Jones a commission with Empress Catherine of Russia, who used him in the Black Sea to harry the Ottomans, the ultimate authority over Barbary. But Jones died before realizing his dream of going to the source and attacking Constantinople. The task of ordering war fell to Jefferson.
I believe—because of the encounter with the insufferable Abd Al-Rahman and because of his long engagement with Jones—that Jefferson had long sought a pretext for war. His problem was his own party and the clause in the Constitution that gave Congress the power to declare war. With not atypical subtlety, Jefferson took a shortcut through this thicket in 1801 and sent the navy to North Africa on patrol, as it were, with instructions to enforce existing treaties and punish infractions of them. Our third president did not inform Congress of his authorization of this mission until the fleet was too far away to recall.
Heh. I think Hitch is spot on with his accounting of the history. We know the US fought well, and the USMC were especially daring during the Barbary Coast Wars.
Francis Scott Key composed a patriotic song to mark the occasion. As I learned from Joshua London’s excellent book, the original verses ran (in part):
In conflict resistless each toil they endur’d,
Till their foes shrunk dismay’d from the war’s desolation:
And pale beamed the Crescent, its splendor obscur’d
By the light of the star-bangled flag of our nation.
Where each flaming star gleamed a meteor of war,
And the turban’d head bowed to the terrible glare.
Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
Another Virginian, James Madison, was POTUS when the Barbary Coast Wars came to a close.
The Barbary states sought to exploit Anglo-American hostilities by resuming their depredations and renewing their demands for blood money. So in 1815, after a brief interval of recovery from the war with Britain, President Madison asked Congress for permission to dispatch Decatur once again to North Africa, seeking a permanent settling of accounts. This time, the main offender was the dey of Algiers, Omar Pasha, who saw his fleet splintered and his grand harbor filled with heavily armed American ships. Algiers had to pay compensation, release all hostages, and promise not to offend again. President Madison’s words on this occasion could scarcely be bettered: “It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.
If only people would remember Madison’s words. They hold true today just as much as they held true when we became a nation.
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