HELP! Someone help me dispute this?

[Th1onein]

Subject: NEGOTIATIONS IN OUR PREVIOUS ARAB WAR
> >
> >
> > Our Arab War, The One 200 Years Ago
> >
> >
> > Dennis Byrne--He is a Chicago-area writer and
> > public affairs consultant
> > January 5, 2004
> >
> > For those who think it is always wiser to put
> > together an international
> > panel of negotiators to try to talk foreign enemies
> > into being nice, I
> > present to you our Arab war. The one 200 years ago.
> > The one in which
> > diplomacy failed miserably. The one in which Europe
> > refused to help. The one
> > we conducted alone. And won. The Barbary Wars
> > --Talk about forgetting the
> > lessons of history. One of the first ones we
> > learned 200 years ago was that
> > "diplomacy" and "multilateralism" sometimes must
> > end and direct action must
> > begin. Back then, pirates from the North African
> > states of Morocco, Algiers,
> > Tunis and Tripoli routinely plundered and seized
> > our ships, demanded ransoms
> > for captive crews or sold our sailors into slavery.
> > European shipping
> > routinely suffered the same fate.
> >
> > Europe's answer was "let's negotiate," which meant
> > sitting down with some
> > pasha and asking him how much money he wanted to
> > leave them alone. Then
> > forking over millions. Thomas Jefferson thought
> > that approach ridiculous,
> > inviting never-ending blackmail. As the American
> > minister to France, he
> > strongly urged a multinational alliance to "reduce
> > the piratical states to
> > peace." Pick them off one at a time "through the
> > medium of war," so the
> > others get the message, and they'll give up their
> > piracy too.
> >
> > Some European powers were "favorably disposed," as
> > Jefferson said, to a
> > joint operation. But guess who had reservations?
> > France. (No kidding, you
> > can't make up this stuff). France, because of its
> > own interests, was
> > suspected of secretly supporting the Barbary
> > powers. So, the plan collapsed
> > in favor of a policy of continued negotiations
> > (read: appeasement) - meaning
> > supplicating the blackmailers to tell us how much
> > money they wanted for the
> > ransom of ships and sailors and for annual
> > tributes.
> >
> > When Jefferson became president in 1801, he finally
> > could do something about
> > it himself. He simply refused Tripoli's demand for
> > a tribute. That provoked
> > Tripoli to declare war on us, as if this young,
> > upstart pup of a nation had
> > any right to stand up for its principles.
> > Jefferson's response was a
> > no-nonsense piece of clarity.
> >
> > He sent a squadron of ships to blockade and bombard
> > Tripoli. The results of
> > these efforts were somewhat mixed. But on Feb. 16
> > of this year, we will
> > celebrate the bicentennial of Lt. Stephen Decatur
> > leading 74 volunteers into
> > Tripoli harbor to burn the previously captured
> > American frigate, The
> > Philadelphia, so it could not be used for piracy.
> >
> > It was considered one of the most heroic actions in
> > U.S. naval history. The
> > next year, Marines bravely stormed a harbor
> > fortress, an act now
> > commemorated in the "Marine Corps Hymn" with the
> > words "... to the shores of
> > Tripoli." Eventually, Morocco, seeing what was in
> > store for it, dropped out
> > of the fight And the threat of "regime change" in
> > Tripoli led to a treaty of
> > somewhat dubious benefits for the United States.
> >
> > Demonstrating the need for perseverance and
> > patience, a series of victories
> > in 1815 by Commodores William Bainbridge and
> > Decatur finally led to a Treaty
> > ending both piracy against us and tribute payments
> > by us.
> >
> > We even extracted monetary compensation for
> > property they seized from us.
> >
> > Meanwhile, Europeans, continuing their
> > multilateral, diplomatic approach
> > kept paying and paying and paying.
> >
> > Lessons? No, it doesn't prove that diplomacy and
> > international cooperation
> > never work. But it demonstrates a principle: The
> > United States, when
> > confronted with weak resolve from the international
> > community against
> > enemies, sometimes needs to stand alone for what is
> > right. And it sometimes
> > works.
> >
> > By coincidence, Tripoli today is the capital of
> > Libya, whose leader Moammar
> > Gadhafi, noticing the pounding that the United
> > States gave to tyrants in
> > Afghanistan and Iraq, abandoned his own weapons of
> > mass destruction program.
> >
> > Perhaps Gadhafi, unlike some of our own blindly
> > anti-war academics,
> > commentators and politicians, has read history,
> > especially as it happened in
> > Libya.
> >
> > One more footnote: France finally settled the hash
> > of the Barbary Coast
> > states in 1830 when it simply went in and took over
> > the place. The official
> > provocation, according to France, was some sort of
> > an insult to the French
> > consul in Algiers. France, demonstrating its
> > superior humanitarian
> > instincts, remained there as a colonial power for a
> > century. Unlike the
> > United States, which, wanting only to protect its
> > citizens and its ships,
> > got out when it won.
>

[PretzelWarrior]

1. weren't we charter members of UN and NATO back then?

yeah. that's what i thought. Surely we should dictate foreign policy based on 150 or 200 year old examples. Similarly, we should pull from that period for domestic policy and reinstitute slavery, take the vote of women away...anything else?

Another thing: that case clearly wasn't preemptive was it? They went to the source. Unlike this war where Party A punches party B so party B kicks party C in the groin.

[mmm]

2. Good post

[Nlighten1]

3. Well...the author is right on some points...

sometimes you CANNOT negotiate...however...his reasoning for saying it applies to the current war in Iraq just doesn't fit.

[opiate69]

4. Also..

this xenophobic moran is incorrectly lumping all arabs together. Last time I checked, we were not in a war against all Arab peoples. Contrary to Chimpy's insistence on using the word "crusade". To me, the current situation is similar to the Irish Protestants attacking Spain to retaliate for being attacked by Irish Catholics.

[pnorman]

5. I'll do a Google-search later on this; I'm headed out the door right now.

but my recollection of looking up that Barbary War ("to the shores of Tripoli") a few months ago, was that there was a lot of "less than praiseworthy" negotiations that the early leaders of this country engaged in. For one thing: John Adams had signed a treaty with one of those Barbary sultans, which included the statement that the USA is NOT a Christian nation.

pnorman

[El Supremo]

6. Wow, this has only been forwarded twice!

I must be further down on the right wingers lists. Most of the junk I get has so many arrows that they are unreadable.

Anyway, my best response is what I have been telling people for over a year. We were not appeasing Iraq we were containing them! A big difference. We bombed their missile sites on almost a weekly basis. We and Europe had sanctions against them. And it worked! The proof is that they had no military to fight us with when we rolled over them.

[never cry wolf]

7. First, we didn't invade and occupy

Second, we did pay the tribute to the other Barbary states, just not Tripoli.

Third, Gadhafi caving in because of our actions in the ME is a RW myth. He had been negociating this with the Brits and US for a long time.

Fourth, apparently there was alot of negociations, diplomacy and treaties with the Barbaries.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/barbary.htm