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| Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates |
| 2007-04-23 |
| By Christopher Hitchens AmericaÂ’s first confrontation with the Islamic world helped forge a new nationÂ’s character. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #3 Thanks for the history lesson, Mike. Jeeze Louise! Deja Vous all over again with this stuff, eh? Same type of characters in govt. Depressing..... |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2007-04-23 18:13 |
| #2 Now, now, now, the Turkish ambassador obviously had mistunderstood Mo's teachings...... |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2007-04-23 10:57 |
| #1 As always, Mr. Hitchens does a great job, and this is a story America needs to know and remember - but there's a few points that should be addressed. First, Jefferson - while not the anti-military and isolationist politician that many would have us believe - was never in favor of a large fleet and Marine regiment (and it stayed a regiment for another forty years or so) and firmly believed that America's destiny lay westward in the vast tracts of the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson happily allowed his SecTreas, Albert Gallatin, to come within an ace of essentially closing down the USN and the Marines with it - and this while the Barbary Wars were reaching their height. At one point, the USN was down to just nine purpose-built warships (the United States class frigates), and some of those were to have been 'in ordinary', that is, laid up with skeleton caretaker crews. Next, what the USN was doing in the Med was far from the 'instructions to enforce existing treaties and punish infractions of them' that Mr. Hitchens states. They were there in the desperate hope that the Barbary pirates (who tended to quail away from large heavily armed warships with trained sailors and Marines aboard)would therefore stay away from US shipping. It didn't work for a number of reasons. First, the aggressiveness of the US skippers was in some cases less than what was called for (in one case, USS Constellation watched as a Pirate towed a captured US merchantman past because Constellation's skipper feared ending up aground)and secondly the ROE were utterly unbelieveable - if a Pirate ship was caught, it could be fired upon and even captured, but then HAD TO BE RETURNED. There was one notable exception to that - the case of Mastico/USS Intrepid - and that was very much a case where the leadership on the scene just said 'the hell with it'. But overwhelmingly, the Mediteranean Squadron was not allowed to do a great deal and when it did it was badly hamstrung. And regarding Consul William Eaton - dear Lord, what an American. BUT - by the time Philadelphia had been captured, Eaton had been out of the Diplomatic Corps for some time due to his utter inability to tolerate the Deys, Beys, Pashas and etc. that ran the North African coast.(Eaton had pretty much been PNG'd out of every one of the Barbary states) He was the one that came up with the idea of going after Yusef Karamanli and replacing him with his borther Hamet (who was actually none too keen on the idea). Congress - although it acknowledged that a state of war existed between Tripoli and the US, never DECLARED war and was horrified of making things any worse (sound familiar?). When given Eaton's plan - which initially called for more men than the US had under arms at the time in both the Army and Marines and EVERY ship in the USN - Congress instead authorized the tiny expedition that eventually went forward only in the devout hope that Eaton would throw up his hands in frustration and quit trying. And yes, the Jefferson Administration did come to a deal with Yusef Karamanli - one that involved payment of tribute and the complete betrayal of Hamet, all of which was completely behind the backs of Eaton and his troops, who weren't supposed to have won the victory they did. Piracy did die down to a considerable extent for some years, but as the USN was called back into home waters before the War of 1812 it fired up again and stayed a problem until after the war when President james Madison (who, as Jefferson's SecState, was the only member of the Cabinet who wanted to go over and kick Barbary ass) sent Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge over with instructions to end the problem once and for all. The Pirates sent out a squadron that was turned into matchsticks by the USN, and organized piracy ended by 1816. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2007-04-23 09:23 |