We Never Learn

www.americanheritage.com...

The U.S. has been here before, twice. Muslim warlords taking Americans hostage; Americans paying ransom and delivering arms to the captors. Now, there are reports that Biden has paid the Taliban not to harm Americans stuck in Afghanistan, and has delivered a windfall of weapons to them. Muslims don’t believe in Santa, but apparently Santa believes in them—and this year, Christmas came early!

The Barbary Pirate Wars are usually an overlooked part of American history. They shouldn’t be. Among the many reasons for their importance, the wars set the tone that lasted over 100 years: don’t mess with U.S. citizens because the U.S. will send an armed expedition to rescue them, no matter how lowly those citizens are. In other words, America leaves no man behind. The article has this to say on the importance to the U.S. of the Barbary Pirate Wars:

Attacks on the United States of America by the pirates of the Barbary Coast commenced almost immediately upon our independence. They would prove to be one of the defining challenges of the Republic, one that would, among other things, give birth to the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps and raise serious questions about the President’s right to wage undeclared wars, the need to balance defense spending against domestic needs, the use of foreign surrogates to fight our battles, and even whether or not it was a good idea to trade arms and money for the release of hostages.

While European powers (even the mighty English and French) had for centuries paid tribute to the pirates, the U.S. quickly decided it couldn’t or wouldn’t. In 1815, the U.S. Navy dispatched a daring overland expedition to Derna, capital city of the pirates. The expedition, led by U.S. Consul to Tripoli William Eaton, included eight Marines led by Lt. Presley O’Bannon (giving rise to the line from the Marines Hymn “…to the shores of Tripoli”). O’Bannon’s sword and a chunk of the palace wall in Derna with Arabic writing on it are on display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Back to the issue of captives. Again, from the article:

By 1796 Algerian corsairs alone had captured 119 sailors from American merchantmen. They were fed near-starvation rations, beaten regularly, and put to work breaking rocks on chain gangs, or scraping barnacles off ship hulls. Some of them had been imprisoned for 12 years, waiting for their countrymen to save them. Only after the payment of $642,000 and thousands more in personal bribes, an agreement to pay an annual tribute of $21,600, and turning over a 36-gun frigate as a “gift” to the dey’s daughter was the U.S. government able to ransom them. It was too late for 31 of the hostages, who had died in captivity.

We have spent 20 long years in Afghanistan in a misguided effort at “Nation building”, best summed up by that famous line in Full Metal Jacket: “Inside every Gook is an American, struggling to get out!” Yeah, not so much. The best approach—then as now—is to simply send a punitive expedition of defined duration and scope to any country in Africa or the Middle East that has taken our citizens hostage. The Taliban (and others) are pirates of sorts. So what happened to the Barbary pirates?

All that the heroics of our fighting men seemed to have won was a better price. But the treaty included no provisions for any future tribute, and in the meantime the United States had built itself a navy. When in 1815 the Barbary pirates began to venture out to prey on U.S. shipping again, President James Madison requested and got a formal authorization of hostilities from Congress. This time, the United States won treaties from the rulers of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, in the form of large indemnities for the damage they had done. The Barbary pirates were finished.

When will we learn that firm, consistent resolve, coupled with a quick, overwhelming strike is the best approach to keeping our citizens safe?

On top of that the admin were originally going to charge each citizen $2000 to be taken out of Afghanistan, american citizen.

There are talks about air strikes to take out remaining US hardware after the "evacuation", however that would mean killing alot of taliban at the same time.

But, yes you would think, we would have learnt by now that invasion and occupation never ends well.

a reply to: Nexttimemaybe

a reply to: Thoughtcrime


Love this post! Very informative.

originally posted by: KTemplar
a reply to: Thoughtcrime


Love this post! Very informative.

Thanks!!

a reply to: KTemplar

What I forgot to mention is that the Barbary Pirates had captured thousands of European women and several dozen American women from merchant ships. Then as now, these women were sold as sex slaves. On another note, the article quoted said that American payments to the pirates at one point comprised 20% of the federal budget! The equivalent of $200 billion out of the $1 Trillion budget.

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe


But, yes you would think, we would have learnt by now that invasion and occupation never ends well.

no, what we have failed to learn is that it takes many decades to fix problems and create a stable country. and that any occupation needs tp last at least 50 years, to create a stable government and country, if not more. and thus need to plan to be there for the long term whenever such territory needs to be dealt with. in fact not spending such time properly preparing countries for self rule for such a period of time is exactly why there are so many problems in the world. problem areas like Africa, and the middle east for example has all been caused by such neglect.

originally posted by: generik

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe


But, yes you would think, we would have learnt by now that invasion and occupation never ends well.

no, what we have failed to learn is that it takes many decades to fix problems and create a stable country. and that any occupation needs tp last at least 50 years, to create a stable government and country, if not more. and thus need to plan to be there for the long term whenever such territory needs to be dealt with. in fact not spending such time properly preparing countries for self rule for such a period of time is exactly why there are so many problems in the world. problem areas like Africa, and the middle east for example has all been caused by such neglect.

Which brings up an interesting question about Colonialism. Obviously, I didn’t plan on bringing up the topic, but since you have, generik…. One of my kids was telling me about a YT video he’d seen. The video was a friendly argument between an African man in his thirties and a Chinese man around the same age. You probably know that the Chinese have gone BIG into Africa; they buy up huge swaths of land, build infrastructure, etc. The Chinese man was bragging about how strong China was and how much better off Africans are with Chinese investment. The African man said that was wrong. Africans were MUCH better off under the French and British because Africans could learn engineering, education and other topics in the ‘Mother Country’ [i.e. The U.K., France, Belgium, etc] and return to their country to help build and RUN the projects they had learned. The Chinese only exploit Africans and their resources and export Chinese to Africa to run Chinese-owned projects.
I thought that was an astounding take on Colonialism from an African man.

We've been brainwashed by decades of TV, movies, etc., that we're supposed to be the good guys and that the reason the world is in constant turmoil is because our viewpoint is not shared by everybody. We want to show them how great we are. We want to help the underdog and downtrodden. It's a fundamental philosophical viewpoint we have going all the way back to the Greeks.

Thing is, though, not everybody in the world thinks that way, and we are not the default when it comes to what is "right." There are a lot of countries and other organizations out there who think that if an ethnic or racial minority is out there gaining too much power in your country, or if some other country has something you need but won't give it to you, the only reasonable thing to do is fight them and kill them all. And if you don't you're weak and they'll be coming after you instead.

The Golden Rule, which could roughly be described as "treat others as you would have them treat you," becomes "they would kill us if they had the chance, so best to kill them first." So we stroll in with our "humanitarian" ideals and stuff, and the people there think we're crazy.

It's often said that people are the same all over. They're not. They're really not.