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.