Obama the Beggar

It's almost impossible to fight an enemy that has similar political and religious sentiments as its own president! m/r

When American envoys came to beg on bended knee they were received with open contempt, told that ransom would be far higher than their original offer. When envoys arrived, backed by credible military force, the response was more measured. It was proof positive of the validity of Frederick the Great’s maxim that diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.

From Barbary to the Gulf: Corsairs Then and Now | The American Spectator

By John C. Wohlstetter – 9.3.15

The only problem now is that the stakes are so much higher.

In 2007, two years before he became Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren penned a magisterial history of America’s long involvement in the Middle East, which goes back to within a decade of America’s founding. In Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, Oren shows that not only was America involved in what then was called the Orient; he shows the extent of entanglement, and consequent great influence exerted by, America’s long tribulations with the Barbary pirates. The tale he so deftly spins holds lessons for America today—lessons sadly ignored by the current administration.

Barbary corsairs marauded on the high seas as far back as the 12^th century; their first American prize was taken by Morocco in 1625. During most of the 18^th century British naval vessels escorted Colonial shipping; by the 1770s one-fifth of American exports went to Mediterranean—including Barbary—ports. The American Revolution ended such protection. The only alternative escort option was the French fleet, but Gallic gallantry during our War of Independence was superseded by pecuniary national interest, as in protecting French commerce from competition.

Initially the fledgling republic paid ignominious tribute to ransom captives waylaid on the high seas and held in fetid, infectious squalor punctuated by torture, if not sold into slavery; then it sent intrepid sailors and soldiers to offer ransom to the Mediterranean’s penny-ante potentates—dubbed pashas, deys, and beys—of Morocco, plus the Ottoman trio of Tripolitania, Tunis, and Algiers. In 1815, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase having been consummated and the War of 1812 having ended, President Madison sent Stephen Decatur to humble the Barbary powers once and for all. Thus ended thirty years of frustration and embarrassment. America won respect as a power to be reckoned with for the first time. But during those decades 35 American ships were seized and 700 captives enslaved.

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