Our founding fathers spent approximately 40 long years paying millions in ransons to negotiate safe passage for our shipping vessels and sailor against Islamist aggression! In 1801, the first head of state to declare war against America was Yusuf Karamanli, of Tripoli. He may have been a high ranking official of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, at one time.
The Marine hymn: "From the Halls of Montezuma, To the shores of Tripoli; We fight our country's battles In the air, on land, and sea..." includes this battle. The Barbary Wars were caused by Islamists.
Here are a list of resources about this struggle:
Barbary Wars, 1801-1805 and 1815-1816 U.S. Department of State (it's a political correct version, with no mention of the religious ideology of their right to attack).
The Barbary States were a collection of North African states, many of which practiced state-supported piracy in order to exact tribute from weaker Atlantic powers. Morocco was an independent kingdom, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli owed a loose allegiance to the (z: Islamic supremacist) Ottoman Empire. The United States fought two separate wars with Tripoli (1801-1805) and Algiers (1815-1816), although at other times it preferred to pay tribute to obtain the release of captives held in the Barbary States.
...When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
Victory in Tripoli: Lessons for the War on Terrorism
Folayan, Kola Tripoli during the reign of Yusuf Pasha Qaramanli. Ife, Nigeria: University of Ife Press, 1979.
McLachlan, K. S. "Tripoli and Tripolitania: Conflict and Cohesion during the Period of the Barbary Corsairs (1551-1850)." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 3.3 (1978): 285-294.
Recent Comments