When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists
Back in 1784, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had to decide whether to appease or stand up to armed Middle Eastern pirates. Sound familiar?
John McCain and Barack Obama are now engaged in a long-distance dispute over whether talking to America’s enemies is integral to America’s security (with neither one wishing to talk to poor Hillary Clinton any longer).
McCain has not so subtly assailed Obama as an “appeaser” for his stated willingness to sit down with the Iranian leadership about its nuclear weapons program and sponsorship of jihadism in Iraq — and never mind for now if that leadership consists of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile, Obama has repeatedly labeled McCain a kind of hyper-Bush militarist of the shoot first, sign treaties later school of foreign policy. McCain has hinted at Chamberlain and Munich, always a histrionic conversation-ender in matters of these sort, and Obama has sheepishly downplayed the Iranian threat by contrasting it against the Soviet one, and, without any hint of irony, indicating Kennedy’s talks with Khrushchev in Vienna, and Reagan’s momentous mini-summit with Gorbachev in Reykjavik as proof that toughness and diplomacy are not mutually exclusive concepts. (One witty editorial in The New York Times reminded Obama that Camelot’s finest hour was not its Austrian kibitz with the Russian premier, an event that laid all the psychological bricks, so to speak, for the erection of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis.)
Oddly though, in their rush to analogize by way of chivvying each other, neither candidate has actually pulled an example relevant to the region of the globe now under discussion. The Middle East, a term coined by Alfred Thayer Mahan, one of McCain’s boyhood idols, is where both American warfare and American diplomacy began in the late 18th century, as our infant republic faced its first post-Revolutionary struggle against the evocatively named Barbary States of the Ottoman Empire.
Jaw-jaw competed with war-war, all right, with the latter eventually winning out.
The regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers (future homes of Muammar Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat, and the Islamic Salvation Front, respectively) had been hosting and sponsoring Islamic piracy since the Middle Ages. Scimitar-wielding corsairs would regularly interrupt the flow of trade and traffic along the coasts of North Africa, seizing European vessels and taking their crews into bondage. Cervantes wrote his first play, in the 16th century, about the dread corsairs, and by the 18th, the American colonies had a minor seagoing presence in the Mediterranean protected by the redoubtable British Navy. But the Crown was reluctant to war against so petty an antagonist, preferring to pay “tribute” to the Barbary States instead, as a shopkeeper would protection money to the mafia. After the U.S. broke away from England and became its own nation, however, the geopolitical dynamics changed, as did the American equanimity with doing business with pirates.
In 1784, corsairs attacked the Betsy, a 300-ton brig that had sailed from Boston to Tenerife Island, about 100 miles off the North African coast, selling her new-made citizens as chattel on the markets of Morocco. The U.S. was not free of its own moral taint of slavery, of course, but it would be impossible to hasten the industrial development that would eventually render the agrarian-plantation economy obsolete if merchant ships could not be assured of safe conduct near the Turkish Porte. Other vessels, such as the Dauphin and Maria, were also seized, this time by Algiers, and the horrifying experiences of their captive passengers relayed back home were the cause for outrage. James Leander Cathcart described the dungeon in which he was being kept as “perfectly dark…where the slaves sleep four tiers deep…many nearly naked, and few with anything more than an old tattered blanket to cover them in the depth of winter.”
In response, Thomas Jefferson, then the Minister to France, suggested a multilateral approach of what we would now term “deterrence.” He asked that Spain, Portugal, Naples, Denmark, Sweden and France enter into a coalition with America to dissuade the regencies from their criminal assaults on life, liberty and the pursuit of international commerce. As Michael Oren, in his magisterial history Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to Present relates, “By deterring, rather than appeasing, Barbary, the United States would preserve its economy and send an unambiguous message to potentially hostile powers.” Jefferson thought it would impress Europe if America could do what Europe had failed to do for centuries and beat back the persistent thuggery of Islamists. “It will procure us respect,” said the author of the Declaration of Independence. “And respect is a safeguard to interest.”
This sober judgment fused the cold calculations of latter-day “realism” with the morality behind revolutionary interventionism: not only would America protect its citizens from plunder and foreign slaveholding; it would ensure that other countries under “Christendom” were similarly protected.
Though Jefferson found a stalwart Continental ally in a former one, the Marquis de Lafayette, France squelched the idea of a NATO made of buckshot and cannon. While waiting for funds that would never come from Congress for the construction of a 150-gun navy, the sage of Monticello resigned himself to further diplomacy with the enemy. In 1785, he dispatched John Lamb, a Connecticut businessman, to secure the release of hostages in Algiers, held by its dynastic sovereign Hassan Dey. Lamb failed ignominiously.
At the same time, John Adams, then minister to England, agreed to receive the pasha of Tripoli, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar, in his London quarters to discuss a possible peace deal. Adams described his interlocutor as a man who looked all “pestilence and war,” a suspicion that was soon confirmed by the pasha’s demand of 30,000 guineas for his statelet, plus a 3,000 guinea gratuity for himself. He also did Adams the favor of estimating what it would cost the U.S. to broker a similar deal with Tunis, Morocco and Algiers — the total price for blackmail would be about $1 million, or a tenth the annual budget of the United States.
Adams was incensed. “It would be more proper to write [of his meeting with ‘Abd al-Rahman] for the… New York Theatre,” he thundered. He agreed with Jefferson that a military response was increasingly likely, but Adams doubted his country’s economic ability to sustain it. For the short term, he thought it better to offer “one Gift of two hundred Thousand Pounds” rather than forfeit “a Million annually” in trade revenue, which the pirates were sure to disrupt. Not long thereafter, Jefferson joined him in London to prevent the “universal and horrible War” and reach an accord with the refractory envoy from Tripoli. Both gentlemen of the Enlightenment, and comrades in revolution, affirmed America’s desire for peace, its respect for all nations, and suggested a treaty of lasting friendship with the regency. ‘Abd al-Rahman listened well, but his reply was one that would shock modern ears less than it did those of the two Founding Fathers:
“It was… written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged [the Muslims'] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon wheoever 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.”
Though a period of paying tribute and douceurs (or “softeners” — expensive trickets and toys) to Islamic pirates would continue, the words of ‘Abd al-Rahman Adams were chilling enough to leave Adams and Jefferson in no doubt as to the sanguinary and messianic nature of their adversary. “An angel sent on this business,” lamented Jefferson, “could have done nothing” to placate such men. He called them “sea dogs” and a “pettifogging nest of robbers.” The episode preceded further acts of piracy against American vessels and the imprisonment and sale of its crews and passengers, and was enough to get Jefferson to overlook his wariness of federalism and agree to a Constitution with a strong central government capable of building and keeping a powerful navy. Adams, as it turned out, was more worried that American opinion wouldn’t rally for war, or accept its dire consequences. But the Philadelphia convention that drafted our national covenant in 1787 was hastened, and its welter of opinions unified, by the Barbary question. As the historian Thomas Bailey wrote, “In an indirect sense, the brutal Dey of Algiers was a Founding Father of the Constitution.”
America still sued for peace. The Betsy’s release had been negotiated, albeit abjectly, and to the accompaniment of America’s first diplomatic accord, the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Ship-Signals, signed with Morocco in 1786. But no sooner was the ship let go and its captives freed than it was recaptured by Tunis and renamed the Mashuda. Also, Washington at one point found itself spending 20% of its annual revenue in paying blackmail to a loose confederation of terrorists on the high seas. Under Jefferson’s presidency, the first era of American military predominance was inaugurated, with men like William Bainbridge, William Eaton and the Byronic swashbuckler Stephen Decatur, becoming folk heroes. Their legacies would be fondly remembered by Patton as he alighted, a century and a half later, on the shores of Morocco and Algeria, this time to defeat another barbaric and imperial menace — the Nazis.
If there is a lesson to be had in all this, it is that talk is not cheap in matters of geopolitics, and can be instructive in ways one hadn’t even considered.
But no commander-in-chief need be blind to the arrogance and intransigence of his foe, particularly when it is an Islamist one. (And Jefferson and Adams did not have to contend with a foe seeking the ultimate means of apocalypse.) Santayana got it backwards, in fact: even those who remember history are still doomed to repeat it.
That goes double for America’s involvement in the Middle East.
Michael Weiss is a senior editor of Tablet Magazine and a culture blogger for The New Criterion. He also writes occasionally for Slate, The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The New York Daily News and Standpoint.
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40 Comments
1. ajacksonian:Over at the Library of Congress site devoted to Jefferson and his papers, a good article by Gerard W. Gawalt looks over this era:
Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America’s minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, “I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro’ the medium of war.” Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: “The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both.” “From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money,” Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.”
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That was after all the talking of multi-party coalitions went down… Jefferson did try that approach and came to realize America had to look after her own interests as no one else would.
May 27, 2008 - 4:55 am 2. AJ:Well put. History is a key to understanding the modern world, but NEVER try logic, reason or facts with a leftist, as to them, it’s all relative, and history began in the 1960s when “social” matters too over, removing the stain of 150 years of slavery, racism, lynchings, KKK, segregation and Jim Crow from their party.
Islam has been at war with the west and our liberal values for 1500 years…funny how that is no longer taught in schools or via the MSM?
May 27, 2008 - 7:53 am 3. Dave:“But no commander-in-chief need be blind to the arrogance and intransigence of his foe, particularly when it is an Islamist one.”
Hmmm…you would think! It’s not hard to think of one wanna-be commander-in-chief though that I wouldn’t put it past him, particularly given his pitiful record of remembering even RECENT history!
May 27, 2008 - 8:44 am 4. Dane:Good article!
I’ve been using the 1786 Jefferson quote (”It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners…”) for a while, as it makes a perfect response to the argument that the reason the United States has been the target of Islamic terrorism is due to our support for Israel or our recent policies in the Middle East.
May 27, 2008 - 10:49 am 5. njcommuter:“pettifogging nest of robbers”
A wonderful turn of phrase, and quite applicable to the UN and many of the despots beloved of the liberals. In fact, “pettifogging” might be applied to the Left, too.
May 27, 2008 - 4:32 pm 6. Professor Guvinof:There is a lot more to this great story: Shortly after this disappointing start, Jefferson launched the very first expeditionary mission, brilliantly executed by the very first US Marines, operating against extraordinary odds. They came out victorious out of audacity and courage, not manpower in the accounting sense of the word, as sheer numbers were plainly against them. This first success is the reason for the name of Tripoli in the Marines’s hymn. I don’t have all the details from the top of my head, but those of you who really know history can fill in, as I am sure will soon happen. Today’s Marines are certainly doing justice to their predecessors, as well as applying justice to the crocodiles in Iraq and elsewhere at the same time.
Semper Fi!
May 27, 2008 - 4:46 pm 7. lgkick:This analogy that you are intending is not quite working. It seems that this time around it is the US who is demanding ransom. It is the US military and warships that are occupying the Muslim land and waters. The great man Jefferson would have not approved of today’s US foreign policy.
May 27, 2008 - 5:24 pm 8. Young men who don’t like mustard | The Anchoress:[...] hearts and minds” isn’t it? Doesn’t fit the narrative, though. Did you know the founding fathers also faced Islamists? News to [...]
May 27, 2008 - 5:36 pm 9. Hell_Is_Like_Newark:lgkick
Check your History. That is exactly what the Jeffersonian and Adams administration did, occupy foreign lands or use foreign lands (with grudging permission from the locals) to support military dominance in the area.
A suggested read on the birth of US Naval power and the campaign against the Barbary pirates:
May 27, 2008 - 7:23 pm 10. Brad:http://www.amazon.com/Six-Frigates-Epic-History-Founding/dp/039333032X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211941375&sr=1-1
And what ransom would that be, lgkick?
May 27, 2008 - 7:34 pm 11. Mike from OH:lgkick – “it is the US who is demanding ransom. It is the US military and warships that are occupying the Muslim land and waters.”
Not so fast there, all Muslims are occupying lands of other cultures. Mohammad was a general and his writings are simply a manifest for conquer and subjugation. The U.S. is the first Western nation to press a counter attack (Iraq both militarily and socially) after beating back muslim aggression.
May 27, 2008 - 7:52 pm 12. venividivici:And what ransom would that be, lgkick?
Good luck getting an answer. Nearest I can tell, someone who would say the US is the “bad guy” in the current-day story of US-Middle East relations is saying it without much in the way of proof or reason, they’re just saying it because that’s what they say every time there’s a story that needs a bad guy.
Or, they delve into conspiracy theories, then call those who disbelieve in the conspiracies various names, primarily attempting to impugn the non-believer’s intelligence.
May 27, 2008 - 8:18 pm 13. Titanus:It is hypocritical for the US to be waging war against Islamic terrorism given the US record in the Balkans: the US supported Islamists in Bosnia and Kosovo against the Christian Serbs.
One would think that, after their experience in Afghanistan, the Americans in particular and NATO in general would have realized that supporting Islamic extremists for the purpose of achieving short-term strategic goals is an approach that is sure to blow up in their face (often quite literally). Nevertheless, following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil war, the US and NATO hurried to condemn the way Serbia was treating Albanian separatists in its province of Kosovo; Albanian separatists who were led by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The KLA, classified by both the government of Serbia and by the CIA as an illegal terrorist organization, is very much Islamist and extremist in nature. Following the Mujahedeen example, KLA fighters engaged the government of Serbia in a lengthy guerilla war in the late 1990’s. As Chris Marsden explains, the KLA “had pursued a strategy of destabilising the Serbian province of Kosovo by acts of terrorism, in the hope that the US and NATO would intervene. They ambushed Serb patrols and killed policemen.” The US and NATO did intervene, providing finances, weaponry, and finally direct military aid by bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999. As a result, Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo, and NATO moved in. As of January 2008, NATO maintains its presence in Kosovo while the US and other Western states are advocating that Kosovo ought to become an independent Albanian Muslim state ruled by the KLA. This would allow NATO to maintain its bases in Kosovo permanently. Unless, of course, the Albanian Islamists turn on them like the Afghan Islamists did.
Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has also had a presence in Kosovo; a Washington Times article reported that al-Qaeda “both trained and financially supported” the KLA. The Times of London quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, as saying that bin Laden had used humanitarian agencies as fronts to fund terrorism in the region as far back as 1994, and that “terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania. Interpol believes more than 100,000 blank Albanian passports were stolen in riots last year, providing ample opportunity for terrorists to acquire false papers.” Like with the opium industry in 1980’s Afghanistan, organized crime, prostitution, and drug and human trafficking rings have ballooned in Kosovo during the KLA insurgency. As in Afghanistan, the many criminal operations in Kosovo are funding Islamic terrorism. The KLA remains firmly in control of Kosovo, its members have achieved major victories in recent elections, and crime and extremism continue to be rampant in the breakaway province.
Even as conflict in the original Afghanistan appears to have no end in sight, the US and NATO seem to be pursuing in Kosovo the same strategy that created the Afghan mess. The Americans do not seem to realize that Islamic extremists are not the grateful type, and that short-term strategic goals are not worth creating another “Islamic Emirate” and another regime that harbors terrorists. The ends do not justify the means!
Similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Albanians in Kosovo are destroying Christian churches, desecrating Christian cultural sites and graveyards, and terrorizing the Serbian and other non-Albanian minorities in Kosovo. Their goal of creating a purely Islamic state led by war-hardened extremist militants seems close at hand. The only thing missing, for now, is a Religious Police.
It should come as no surprise if within a few years we witness NATO invading its Albanian Islamist “allies” in Kosovo and fighting a prolonged guerilla war against them as well. The 2007 Fort Dix Terrorist Plot, planned by 6 jihadi terrorists including 4 Kosovar Albanians (1 of them being a KLA-trained sharp shooter), seems to be a prelude to what can be expected when the Albanian Islamists see no further use in cooperating with the US and NATO. The shortsightedness of American foreign policy in Afghanistan is being repeated in Kosovo, the lessons have not been learned, and the world is left to anticipate the consequences of an “Islamic Emirate” in Europe.
May 27, 2008 - 10:37 pm 14. lgkick:venividivici,
You don’t have to be a ‘bad guy’ to make terrible choices. The US has made and continues to make terrible choices in the ME. What else do you call supporting dictators, staging coupes, unconditional support for Israel, and going to an admittedly false war. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t believe the US is the great Satan. The US policies in the ME are just plain stupid mistakes made by fallible policy makers who can’t bring into consideration 5 years from now let alone 20 years.
May 27, 2008 - 10:49 pm 15. Steve:You don’t have to be a ‘bad guy’ to make terrible choices. The US has made and continues to make terrible choices in the ME. What else do you call supporting dictators, staging coupes, unconditional support for Israel, and going to an admittedly false war.
Admittedly false? I love it when the anti-war types say that, the only people who say it’s a false war are the people against it. Ah..wondering how long it would take to mention Israel…the only democracy in the Middle East ..yeah wonder why we would be friends with them? I think this should be looked at the other way, America is trying to it’s best in region that is filled with dictators and Islamofacists but they get a pass on their choices because well, they’re not America. The article above is a good one. It once again shows that appeasement never works.
May 28, 2008 - 3:10 am 16. venividivici:Steve,
Good response. People like lgkick seem to think there’s this alternative ME reality in which we could find ourselves allies who aren’t compromised in some way relative to our own political systems and principles. I suppose lgkick would have had us support the nascent Communist movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s, who were probably the only organized forces aside freom the dictators and mullahs of the region. The choices made have not been the choices I would make, either, but to say that we’ve somehow been holding the ME “ransom” is nonsense. What’s holding the entire region, and our policy toward it, “ransom” is Mohammed and the bandit’s religion he made up. Get rid of Islam and the sky’s the limit for the Middle East. I used to think Communism was the worst thing that had ever happened to humanity. Now I realize that it has a co-champion to share that prize with in Islam.
May 28, 2008 - 5:07 am 17. The Founders’ War on Terrorism — Cranach: The Blog of Veith:[...] is a fascinating account of our nation’s first conflict with radical Islam: When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists. When the Barbary states captured American ships and made slaves of American citizens, both John [...]
May 28, 2008 - 5:32 am 18. Mike from OH:btw. I read the book earlier this year and believe it time well spent. I wonder if BHMO, Hill or JMcC ever have? Judging by his strategy I wouldn’t be surprised if Gen. Petraeus has.
May 28, 2008 - 7:08 am 19. asdfs:lgkick
May 28, 2008 - 7:48 am 20. asdfs:“unconditional support for Israel” That right there shows us all you are part of the death cult known as islam or are a dhimmi who ignores facts like all the concessions the US has made Israel do to the imaginary people calling themselves Palistinians, who were they before 1967? Eqyptians, Jordainians, and Syrians. They drew first blood way back in the late 1700, its time we finish this before things get more out of hand then they are now.
lgkick needs kicked all the way back to the ME so he can see first hand how lovley it is.
May 28, 2008 - 7:50 am 21. ‘Okie’ on the Lam » Blog Archive » Islamists vs. the West — History Repeats, ad infinitum:[...] and more can be discovered in today’s When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists, the Michael Weiss article in Pajama’s Media [h/t: the Anchoress] wherein Weiss reminds us [...]
May 28, 2008 - 9:34 am 22. Steynianism 152 « Free Mark Steyn!:[...] PAJAMASMEDIA: “When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists” …. [...]
May 28, 2008 - 11:02 am 23. R.C.:Same ol’, same ol’.
There are two kinds of Muslims:
(1.) Unorthodox (occidentalized): Disciples more of Attaturk than Mohamed, these persons are more culturally Islamic than religiously, more casually Islamic than causally, live peaceably among Westerners, and are as worthy of respect as any working Joe, save for the worry that their teenage sons, forgoing the healthier rebellions of bad music and cheap liquor, often drift instead into category 2, described below…
(2.) Orthodox (jihadist): Following Mohammed’s lead as precisely as possible, these persons bed underage (and preferably closely-related) girls, display bloodthirsty atavism towards all living things except those who subscribe to every particular of their ideology, consider negotiating in bad faith to be an act of virtue, make mindless drones of themselves through the repetitive chanting of trite phrases from a holy book plagiarized partly from the Christian Bible and partly from Mao’s Little Red Book, and sneer ignorantly at all that is noble, beautiful, or enlightening.
The future of civil rights in Western Civilization will likely require a great deal of generous solicitude toward the Muslims in Category 1, with a watchful eye on their offspring’s periodic defections into Category 2.
However, the future of civil society in Western Civilization will require a confidently sustained effort to exclude, emasculate, or eradicate those in Category 2.
Exclusion is a matter of border security and mass deportations for incitement to religious violence: One will know that the response has been adequate when mosque buildings in the U.K. are being sold to local Baptist or Hindu congregations because there are no longer enough Jihadists in-country to fund services there.
Emasculation is a matter of financial persecution of terror-supporting or terror-exporting states; when every pipeline, pump, and tanker-harbor in Iran has been destroyed to the benefit of its petrol-exporting competitors, the resulting higher gasoline prices will be more than made up for by the gratifying reduction of the mullahs to utter impotency.
Eradication is a matter of killing jihadists in combat, lifetime solitary imprisonment for the jihadists who are captured, the destruction of all military hardware of jihad-supporting powers, and aerial bombardment, during services, on all mosques, in any nation, wherein incitements to violent jihad are documented (see the work of MEMRI and others on this topic). Ditto for such street-based incitements as Hamas funeral processions.
Had enough?
Igkick is well-named; His ignorance does deserve a kick.
But perhaps so do we all: A kick or a slap or a shaking of the shoulders, for our having no appreciation of what it would mean to “take the gloves off.”
There is not a single sincere jihadist who does not take a more violent attitude toward non-Muslims and moderate Muslims than the stance I just proposed taking toward the jihadists.
Their failure thus far to eradicate all their intended victims has been purely a matter of lacking the means. (And the exodus of non-Muslims from the U.K. to safer neighborhoods elsewhere suggests that the jihadists are more successful than we at emasculation and exclusion.)
Petrodollars, and the impossibility of preventing the dissemination of knowledge, guarantee that these demoniacs will in fact obtain the means within our lifetime to fulfill all their wildest violent fantasies.
Western Civilization’s commitment to prevent this is entirely voluntary and optional in the heart of every citizen. We all may choose to stand up and live, or lie down and die (if slowly, through a sort of demographic and cultural attrition).
Only time will tell if the Men of the West are still men. Let us hope they are; for the corsairs have come upon us during our afternoon siesta, at a low ebb of cultural confidence. Truly did the poet say: “When the barbarians arrive at the gate, we’ll open it for them, thinking it’s the guy with the pizza.”
May 28, 2008 - 11:37 am 24. Amphipolis:By the way, France conquered and annexed the Barbary States in 1830. Eventually a million Europeans were settled there (such as Albert Camus). They fled in the 1960s after independence.
May 28, 2008 - 1:11 pm 25. Gerard:The Leftists want the “senseless war to end,” and of course want “peace in our time.”
I hope that both Left and Right can agree that United States did not start the war with the Jihadists. The attack(s) on the World Trade Center were not criminal offenses; they were acts of war.
Yes, we on the right want to end the “senseless” war. Let’s end it in victory. Yes, we on the right want “peace in our time.” Let’s achieve it on our terms.
My greatest fear about a potential President Obama is that the “charm” that oozes from his pores; may turn out not to be charm, but weakneess. Either way, does anyone believe that the Jihadists we are at war with, will be won over with charm?
Obama’s reaction to Bush’s “Appeaser Speech” reminds us, that many times people are most offended by those accusations, that are closest to the truth.
May 28, 2008 - 1:24 pm 26. Roderick Reilly:Golly, isolationists are so fond of quoting George Washington’s farewell address about “no foreign entanglements” to justify no foreign intervention whatsoever, and certainly nothing nasty like military action.
But even Jefferson didn’t fully learn the lesson of the Barbary Pirates and a strong navy. During his administration, he cut back the size of the Navy, so that when British and French navies were interfering with American trade, the impotent Jefferson had to pull a Jimmy Carter and invoked an embargo against British and French goods. An American economic depression ensued as a result.
May 28, 2008 - 1:39 pm 27. lgkick:asdfs and others,
So whoever does not support Israel unconditionally either belongs to the death cult or is a dhimmi? What kind of logic is that? It is for the sake of Israel herself that I think the US has to be more logical in its support for Israel. Israel may be the only democracy in the region but that does not justify some of her actions. It is easy for you to sit thousands of miles away and support the radical policies of the Israeli government but at the end of the day it is the Israeli people who have to deal with the consequences of the system that they have put in place in the occupied territories.
If there is a serious war in the region, it will be Israel that will get hurt the hardest. The US with her fifty states and large population with vast oceans around her will not be hurt seriously. There are many voices within Israel that have come to realize this but the Israel lobby in the US has not allowed a natural debate take place because people like you are quick to label any criticism of Israel by the worst names possible. This in the long run will be the most dangerous threat to Israel.
R.C., I don’t think kicking me is going to solve any of our problems. I admire the western civilization but I don’t think militarism has contributed much to it. Yes there are still men in the western world. They are the men who are not afraid of self-criticism and are ready to correct their mistakes. Trust me, you won’t match the Islamic machos, since they are ready to blow themselves up and you are not (for any reason including the US security). It has not been the machos who have built this civilization. And if you are ‘man’ enough (in your definition of ‘man’) then you should be in Iraq or Afghanistan helping out the US and its allies, not here offering your kicks.
May 28, 2008 - 2:26 pm 28. rvastar:And if you are ‘man’ enough (in your definition of ‘man’) then you should be in Iraq or Afghanistan helping out the US and its allies, not here offering your kicks.
Wow. The chickenhawk attack. Haven’t heard that one in a while, have you, R.C.?
lgkick, being the Big, Bad, Lefty Arbiter of All-That-Is-Moral that you are, please tell us all how many times a week you’re taking an uninsured person to your doctor and agreeing to pay for all the charges yourself?
Or tell us how many homeless people you have staying with you in the apartment your parents pay for?
Or please inform us how many hours you’ve spent out on the streets protecting innocent people from gun-toting criminals since you surely don’t think those same innocent people should be allowed guns to protect themselves?
And please enlighten us as to what brand of candles it is use to light your apartment, since a conscientious Lefty such as yourself is certainly doing everything he possibly can to avoid contributing to Global Warming?
Oh, and since direct action (i.e. joing the military and fighting) is the only way to legitimately support the war in Iraq, then by logical extension, direct action (i.e. joining the “freedom fighters”) is the only way to legitimately oppose the atrocity of American imperalism.
Now, which group of “freedom fighters” do you belong to?
May 28, 2008 - 5:22 pm 29. Steve:lgkick
Why is it always the burden of Israel to make the efforts for peace? You and the left always demand Israel make moves toward peace. Yet you don’t even make a peep when Iran and other groups refuse to even remove the destruction of Israel as a stated goal?
The arguement about distance and oceans protecting America has been over since World War I. Things in the rest of the world will effect us and for you to say not to worry about it because were far away, espically since 9/11 is beyond naive.
Oh and we won’t match the Isalmofacists? Again your lack of knowledge is amazing. We fought any enemy once before who beleived America was weak and soft and were willing to do kill themselves to get to us. They were know as Imperial Japan. Not sure think we won that one.
I love it when someone like you throws the “why aren’t you serving?” I was in the Navy for 4 years and served in the First Gulf War and now am in law enforcement. Not because I’m macho but I want to serve my country..so what about you tough guy?
May 28, 2008 - 5:48 pm 30. Korla Pundit:People always leave off that Jefferson in fact called off the war just as we were about the win it. Problem with transatlantic communication of the day played a part, but impatience from antiwar Congress pressured him to make a truce with the Bashar of Tripoli, just as we were about to launch devastating attacks from sea and over land.
A truce that the jihadis broke as soon as we were inconvenienced by the War of 1812. You can’t bargain with these monsters.
It was finally James Madison who had the balls to put a finish to the Barbary terrorists, not to mention mopping up the ocean with the English navy.
May 28, 2008 - 5:50 pm 31. D Harvey:Hey Titanus, Hey how long have you been at “State” man that was too short, are you sure you can’ gin
May 28, 2008 - 8:39 pm 32. lgkick:up another250 pages or so?, it was scintillating and thought provoking reading, my thought was a bowl movement. Cheers
rvastar,
I don’t consider myself belonging to the left or right. I follow what is meaningful and reasonable to me not what the party line says and dictates.
Direct action is not always the only way to support a cause but when it comes to war, losing your life or your limbs, your son or daughter, then I think those who are most enthusiastic about the war have to be in front lines.
About freedom fighters, their fight is not my fight. If a foreign force occupies my country and places checkpoints on my way to work, stops me from moving freely around my country, etc., then that would be my fight and I will fight the occupiers.
May 28, 2008 - 10:31 pm 33. jvon:A duck may not believe it’s a duck, but if it quacks and waddles the rest of us know what it is.
Interesting theory that one can only support a war if one’s on the front line. And only idiots join the military, so if someone IS on the front line, we can safely discount anything they say. A very convenient, if transparent, bit of sophistry.
Fortunately people like you (so far) are not calling the shots in our country.
May 29, 2008 - 7:30 am 34. Keith:You’re an idiot and know nothing of Captain O’Banion and the capture of Tripoli. Hence, the USMC sword.
May 29, 2008 - 10:10 am 35. Akatsukami:Note that lgkick openly admits that he would have joined the Werwolf at the end of World War II.
May 30, 2008 - 2:24 am 36. Javelin:I must have missed something, was Saddam or Iran capturing our ships and enslaving our citizens? Todays brainless right wingers love history only when it serves the purpose of more war. War War War, from pea brains who slap themselves on the back and talk pro-life.
May 30, 2008 - 10:04 pm 37. Javelin:lgkick:
May 30, 2008 - 10:12 pm 38. Titanus:You are attempting to reason with stupid, selfish, abusive cretins whose education consists of talk show and right wing blog rants. They are John Wayne phony heroes, who act like heroes and want power so they can bring their fave video game or war movie to life. You simply can not reason with most of them. They worship war, power and money as their real gods, not Jesus whom they never emulate. Please, all you phony John Wayne heroes, if you do manage to start another war, make sure you and your brood get annihilated in it.
D Harvey-fine with me, it never meant to be for indecisive brain -dead. Got any more symptoms of your disorder that you want to share?
May 31, 2008 - 11:47 pm 39. The US/Britain 200 Years war against Islamic pirates - terrorists « Arab racism Islamo fascism:[...] When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists May 27, 2008 … birth of US Naval power and the campaign against the Barbary pirates: …. that United States did not start the war with the Jihadists. … http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/when-the-founding-fathers-faced-islamists/ [...]
Apr 8, 2009 - 5:56 pm 40. The US/Britain 200 Years war against Islamic pirates - terrorists « Freedemocracy’s Weblog:[...] When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists May 27, 2008 … birth of US Naval power and the campaign against the Barbary pirates: …. that United States did not start the war with the Jihadists. … http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/when-the-founding-fathers-faced-islamists/ [...]
Apr 8, 2009 - 5:59 pm