Barbary Privateers

NY Times Letters to Ed. ^ | 3-23-03 | IDRISS JAZAIRY Algerian Ambassador

[Pharmboy]

"America's Long Middle Eastern Romance," by Michael B. Oren (Week in Review, March 16), in suggesting an analogy between President Bush's confrontation with Saddam Hussein and the alleged one between Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary "pirates," leaves out some historical facts.

Jefferson was not a foe of Algiers, but the initiator, together with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, of the Treaty of Peace and Amity signed at Algiers on Sept. 5, 1795.

The article refers to the privateering practiced by the Barbary States as "piracy." Remember, however, that privateering was an internationally accepted practice at the time. Privateers had official passports from their state of origin, whether in Europe or North America.

Like these other countries, Algiers indeed targeted the cargo ships of countries with which it was at war — those countries, according to its policy, with which it had not signed a peace treaty. Hence the 1795 treaty.

Although privateering was banned by the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the Confederate states in America authorized the raider Alabama to privateer in the early 1860's.

Washington, March 17, 2003

[Pharmboy]

First of all, Benjamin Franklin died in 1790; second, Jefferson wanted to go to war with the pirates in the early '90s, and Adams wanted the treaty.

Third, notice the ambassador's definition of whom the Dey of Algeria considered as enemies: those whom had not signed a peace treaty with them. Reality: any nation who does not pay tribute to me a priori is my enemy and I will plunder. Nice folks: they still defend their ancient ways.

[Pharmboy]

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