Militant Islam & America: Full Circle [***Terrorism in 1786 ?*** Appeasement never works !]

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'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.

Terrorism and the New American Republic

In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson met with Arab diplomats from Tunis, who were conducting terror raids and piracy against American ships.

History records them as the Barbary Pirates. In fact, they were blackmailing terrorists, hiding behind a self-serving interpretation of their Islamic faith by embracing select tracts and ignoring others. Borrowing from the Christian Crusades of centuries past, they used history as a mandate for doing the western world one better.

The quisling European powers had been buying them off for years.

On March 28, 1786 Jefferson and Adams detailed what they saw as the main issue:

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretensions to make war upon a Nation who had done them no Injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our Friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Thomas Jefferson wanted a military solution, but decades of blackmailing the American Republic and enslaving its citizens would continue until the new American nation realized that the only answer to terrorism was force.

"There's a temptation to view all of our problems as unprecedented and all of our threats as new and novel," says George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. Shortly after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, Turley advised some members of Congress who were considering a formal declaration of war against the suspected perpetrators.

He invoked the precedent of the Barbary pirates, saying America had every right to attack and destroy the terrorist leadership without declaring war.

"Congress did not actually declare war on the pirates," Turley wrote in a memo, "but 'authorized' the use of force against the regencies after our bribes and ransoms were having no effect.

This may have been due to an appreciation that a declaration of war on such petty tyrants would have elevated their status. Accordingly, they were treated as pirates and, after a disgraceful period of accommodation, we hunted them down as pirates."

Because of their outlaw conduct, pirates -- and modern-day terrorists -- put themselves outside protection of the law, according to military strategy expert Dave McIntyre, a former dean at the National War College. "On the high seas if you saw a pirate, you sank the bastard," he says. "You assault pirates, you don't arrest pirates."

Shoot first, ask questions later. Wanted: Dead or alive. Such is our official policy regarding Osama bin Laden, the most infamous outlaw of the era.

One of the enduring lessons of the Barbary campaigns was to never give in to outlaws, whether you call them pirates or terrorists. In the late 1700s, America paid significant blackmail for peace -- shelling out $990,000 to the Algerians alone at a time when national revenues totaled just $7 million.

"Too many concessions have been made to Algiers," U.S. consul William Eaton wrote to the Secretary of State in 1799. "There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror."

Treaty of Tripoli

The numerous documents surrounding the Barbary Powers Conflict confirm that historically it was always viewed as a conflict between Christian America and Muslim nations:

For example, when writing to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Eaton apprised him of why the Muslims would be such dedicated foes:

Taught by revelation that war with the Christians will guarantee the salvation of their souls, and finding so great secular advantages in the observance of this religious duty [the secular advantage of keeping captured cargoes], their [the Muslims’] inducements to desperate fighting are very powerful.26

Eaton later complained that after Jefferson had approved his plan for military action, he sent him the obsolete warship "Hero." Eaton reported the impression of America made upon the Tunis Muslims when they saw the old warship and its few cannons:

[T]he weak, the crazy situation of the vessel and equipage [armaments] tended to confirm an opinion long since conceived and never fairly controverted among the Tunisians, that the Americans are a feeble sect of Christians.27

In a later letter to Pickering, Eaton reported how pleased one Barbary ruler had been when he received the extortion compensations from America which had been promised him in one of the treaties:

He said, "To speak truly and candidly . . . . we must acknowledge to you that we have never received articles of the kind of so excellent a quality from any Christian nation." 28

When John Marshall became the new Secretary of State, Eaton informed him:

It is a maxim of the Barbary States, that "The Christians who would be on good terms with them must fight well or pay well." 29

And when General Eaton finally commenced his military action against Tripoli, his personal journal noted:

April 8th. We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Musselmen. We have a difficult undertaking!30

May 23rd. Hassien Bey, the commander in chief of the enemy’s forces, has offered by private insinuation for my head six thousand dollars and double the sum for me a prisoner; and $30 per head for Christians. Why don’t he come and take it?31

Shortly after the military excursion against Tripoli was successfully terminated, its account was written and published. Even the title of the book bears witness to the nature of the conflict:

The Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton . . . commander of the Christian and Other Forces . . . which Led to the Treaty of Peace Between The United States and The Regency of Tripoli32

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