George Washington wished to reform or crush Barbary Pirates "to non-existence"

Pregnar Kraps · Feb 23, 2015

George Washington wished to reform or crush Barbary Pirates "to non-existence"

Letter to Marquis de LaFayette

George Washington

Mount Vernon

August 15, 1786

...Some of the late treaties which have been entered into, and particularly that between the King of Prussia and the Ud. States, seem to constitute a new era in negotiation, and to promise the happy consequences I have just now been mentioning.

But let me ask you my Dr. Marquis, in such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary?

Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence.
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http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-marquis-de-lafayette-5/

Lionel Beehner

August 29, 2014

There is a debate raging between the United States and Europe over the wisdom of paying ransoms to terrorists who kidnap people.

The United States refuses to pay. The Europeans say they do not pay, yet end up paying through intermediaries (often the hostages’ employers, in the case of kidnapped journalists).

A recent report by the New York Times found that Al Qaeda-affiliated groups have pocketed over $125 million from such ransoms over the past five years. The result is that Europeans are targeted more than Americans or Brits—they pay more—and hostage taking by groups like ISIS is on the rise.

A similar dilemma vexed European and American statesmen in the late eighteenth century. Instead of Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS, it was Barbary corsair pirates roaming the Mediterranean Sea.

The pirates were not all Muslims or North Africans—two-thirds of their captains were in fact Europeans who had “taken the turban”—and were motivated mostly by profit, but also partly by religion.

They sought to disrupt European and American maritime trade by raiding ships, stealing cargos, and holding crews for ransom. Despite the various peace treaties signed, these North African pirates saw themselves in a “permanent state of war” with their Christian adversaries, writes Paul Silverstein, an anthropologist at Reed College.

Likewise, Europeans treated the pirates as “pathological parasites,” but refused to use force against the nonstate actors.

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson sought to get the Europeans to break the cycle of paying yearly “tributes” to North Africans—namely the sultan of Morocco and governors of Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli—in exchange for safe passage for their merchant vessels.

Europe was still primarily mercantilist at the time, and its armies were a collection of mercenaries and privateers, not the professionalized militaries of today. Britain and France refused the Americans’ offer out of commercial self-interest.

It was the onerousness of the tributes that eventually persuaded the United States to resort to using force against the Barbary corsairs—thereafter immortalizing the “shores of Tripoli” phrase in the U.S. Marine Corps hymn.
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http://nationalinterest.org/feature...the-barbary-pirates-teach-us-about-isis-11164

Actually it is called the "Marine's Hymn".

[video=youtube;sSRlQPD6Xiw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSRlQPD6Xiw[/video]

Some lyrics were popular phrases before the song was written. The line "To the shores of Tripoli" refers to the First Barbary War, and specifically the Battle of Derna in 1805. After Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon and his Marines hoisted the American flag over the Old World for the first time, the phrase was added to the battle colors of the Corps. "The Halls of Montezuma" refers to the Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican-American War, where a force of Marines stormed Chapultepec Castle.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marines'_Hymn

Aleksander Ulyanov · Feb 23, 2015

Well, at least Pregnar isn't saying that we have to watch out for road pirates when we drive by our local mosque, maybe he's improving

It should be noted that George wasn't saying we had to kill all Muslims nor calling for the 14th Crusade either.

Piracy was still endemic in the world at that time. Madagascar remained the main pirate kingdom and had only recently taken the title from the West Indies. I dont' think either of them were Islamic at all.

Interesting post, really.

It should be pointed out that we eventually did pay the tribute, though I think we had also kicked the Barbary's butts by that time

It was, as I understand it, a really complicated situation, partially brought about by the fact that France was really quite friendly with the Ottomans, and the Barbarys were only quasi-independent of them. In the 1840's the French finally got fed up and that's why Algeria was a French "overseas province" until the 1960's

One Eye · Feb 24, 2015

It should be noted that George wasn't saying we had to kill all Muslims
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Well All Muslims are not the problem. But then again all Soviets and Maoists where not the problem either. Yet the United States had the option to kill them all even though there where "billions" of them. America is at war with an ideology and that ideology has cosmetic differences with mainstream Islam. It's like the difference between Trotskysim and Stalinism. One is about permanent revolution the other one is more moderate but both are potentially dangerous subversives who needed to be monitored by the state.

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George Washington wished to reform or crush Barbary Pirates "to non-existence"

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