By:Ruth S. King Wednesday, February 6, 2008

When President Bush recently asked the Saudis to increase their production of oil, the media reported that the request was turned down. In fact, the Saudis offered to discuss the issue only if the president would promise a waiver of visas for Saudi students, something that Americans of all political parties would find unacceptable, given the fact that nearly all of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers hailed from the oil kingdom.

This is not the first time in our history that the Muslim Arab states have held us over a barrel. In the aftermath of independence in 1776, American merchant vessels lost the protection of the British navy, and our ships were routinely attacked and boarded by Arab pirates from Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli – a federation of coastal, semi-autonomous states within the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire.

The pirates looted all goods which were then carried in barrels, and the American crews were enslaved or used as hostages to extract ransom known as “tributes.”

The British and French nominally protected their ships and crews by paying huge sums in ransom to the pirate nations. The young American nation lacked naval power to protect its ships and followed suit by agreeing to pay tributes and ransoms to the Muslim pirates in order to free enslaved crews and vessels. In 1784, the new American Congress actually allocated moneys for payment to the corsairs.

In 1785, the dey (pasha) of Algiers seized two ships and demanded $60,000 in ransom for their crews. Then ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, argued that acceding to this demand would only embolden the pirates, but the congress was in no mood for confrontation, and for the next 15 years, tributes to the Arab pirate nations amounted to 20% of United States government annual revenues.

In 1786, Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Jefferson’s report to Secretary of State John Jay is chilling, and resonates to this day:

The ambassador answered us that the right (to kidnap, loot and enslave) was founded on the Laws of the Prophet (Mohammed), that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman (or Muslim) who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise.

The American Consul to Tunis, William Eaton, was enraged by the escalating demands of the Barbary States. In June 1799, he wrote the following the following assessment of the character of the local Muslim population to the U.S. Secretary of State:

Taught by revelation that war with the Christians will guarantee the salvation of their souls, and finding so great secular advantages in the observance of this religious duty [i.e. keeping captured cargoes] their inducements to desperate fighting are very powerful.

When Jefferson became president in 1801, he dispatched American warships and Marines to the Mediterranean and the Muslim Barbary Coast. Jefferson was determined to prevail on the sea and on the ground. In 1805, the Americans (with a band of mercenary recruits including some Muslims) marched across the desert from Egypt into Tripolitania – incursions that forced surrender and the freedom of captured Americans.

The battle inspired 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.”

The First Barbary War, known as the Tripolitanian War, lasted from 1801 to 1805. It was young America’s first foreign war and the first effort to place an ally on foreign soil. Unfortunately and shamefully, Eaton, who led the march across the desert, was betrayed when a truce was signed prematurely. Colonel Tobias Lear, Consul General to the Regency of Algiers, lulled by so-called overtures of peace, signed a treaty promising more tributes for the release of captured officers.

From Eaton’s diary we have the following bitter assessment: “We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Musselmen [Muslims]. We have a difficult undertaking.” (April 8, 1805)

By 1815, gradual and premature withdrawal of the U.S. Navy encouraged the Barbary states to renew piracy. Soon after the Napoleonic War, America sent two naval squadrons under Commodores Decatur and Bainbridge to the Mediterranean. Resolute force finally brought an end to Muslim Arab piracy against American ships with total military defeat.

However, Barbary piracy continued apace against French and British vessels and in spite of sporadic victories. It was not until after the end of World War I – when the Ottoman navy was dissolved by the combined forces of England, France and Russia – that the era of Arab piracy ended.

Unfortunately, America again pays tributes to the Muslim kingdoms in the form of oil revenues, which have enabled them to infiltrate our academic and military institutions.

And, just like the Barbary Arabs of yore, they pirate and enslave our economy, and demand tributes and ransoms from our legislators and executive branch and business leaders who are too lazy or distracted (or possibly remunerated by outright grants from the oil kingdoms) to find real alternatives to foreign oil.

While the two Barbary Wars (1801-1805 and 1815) are superficially studied in American history, the emphasis is always on the admittedly impressive American naval victories rather than on the centuries of Muslim piracy: invasions and pillaging of villages, and the kidnapping and enslavement of thousands of foreign Christian nationals, including women and children throughout the Mediterranean coast.

Nor are students informed that the Arab slave trade was not limited to African blacks. In fact, in his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan) Robert Davis, a respected professor of history at Ohio State University has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

The multi-culti faculties of most American universities, who see Muslim Arab terrorism as a martial art to vent grudges, would rather ignore this inconvenient truth as they have ignored the Arab participation in all slave trade.

I’d like to add a note about the statement “millions for defense not a cent for tribute,” the rallying cry of America’s war against the Muslim Arab pirates. It is widely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but in fact it was eloquently stated on June 18th, 1798 by a congressman of the Federalist party of South Carolina – Robert Goodloe Harper, who subsequently became chairman of the Ways and Mean Committee.

Here’s the punch line: According to the Democrats running for the Oval Office, it is really “millions for health care, but not a cent for defense.”

And of the Republicans, which one of them would quote Jefferson’s statement that only “the medium of war” will put an end to the confrontation between radical Islam and Western civilization?

Americans may want to reflect on this when they vote in the primaries and on election day.

Ruth King is a freelance writer and contributing editor to FamilySecurityMatters.org, where this originally appeared.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 and is filed under opinion. You can leave a response.