| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Benteen |
Posted - September 05 2005 : 11:40:05 PM
I was perusing around the net and came across an article at evote.com. I always wondered where the Tripoli connection came from in the Marine Corps song. I was a amazed at the implications of President Jeffersons actions. Not unlike President Bush's action in Iraq which many have criticized him for. I guess the President had a precident.
quote:
...terrorist attacks against the U.S. have generated widespread comparisons to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and to the casualties suffered by the country during the Civil War, but as the country gears up for its response, one can also find some similarities to a far more obscure episode in American history - the war against the Barbary pirates in the early 1800s.
Plunder On The High Seas
In the years prior to the Barbary war, the U.S. and other countries had been paying pirates on the North Africa coast to let their shipping pass through the area unmolested -- although by the turn of the nineteenth century the country found itself subjected to increasing demands for tribute and finally a declaration of war on its shipping. Faced with a choice between the exorbitant costs of tribute and having U.S. interests in the Mediterranean attacked by pirates, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched U.S. naval vessels to the region.
One of the most famous incidents from that conflict involved then-Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, who sailed into Tripoli Harbor in 1804 in a bold mission to burn the captured USS Philadelphia. In other notable details from the conflict, the oldest commissioned ship in the Navy, the USS Constitution (still on display in Boston Harbor), also saw action off the Barbary Coast before going on to greater fame in the 1812 war. And of course, the famous line "to the shores of Tripoli" was also coined during the hostilities as U.S. Marines engaged in one of their first overseas missions.
I would love to know more about this. Does anyone know of any good books? |
| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - September 06 2005 : 12:16:19 PM
There are some new books out. But this is not at all like Bush or Halliburton, and I'm no fan of either.
First, we paid tribute to street gang nations openly and got little or nothing for it. We lost about 1/3 of our Navy when a brand new frigate went aground, and we surrendered after a fight about which the less said, the better for those who demand we fight to the death, clustered together in a last stand. The high point was when my fellow alum Preble (believe me, I grew up with this) led the rescue of those who survived and burned the frigate. Then, some Marines (about six) sided with the winners in a dynastic war over Tripoli and that was the reasoning behind the Marine hymn of self regard. We didn't win the war, there was a treaty. The United States wasn't a fly to the pirates, who only feared France and England and with reason. Still, even they paid tribute. Cheaper than a war for awhile.
It's worth noting that Muslims from 1530 to 1640 enslaved about a million Europeans off their own shores, which was much or more than the African trade going to the Americas for that time period. They went as far as Iceland, and of course History's Heavy Bag for practice, Ireland, where they trained their Pirate Youth in summer camps and other romps. Most of the trade about which people were concerned in 1805 was more or less normal produce between Turkey, Greece, Egypt and the western European nations in expansion mode. The US wasn't a burp to Tripoli till some Marines (six or seven) luckily sided with the winners in what was a dynastic war of revenge, apparently.
This isn't terribly impressive. |
| wILD I |
Posted - September 06 2005 : 05:38:58 AM
Not unlike President Bush's action in Iraq which many have criticized him for.
Very true it was slave ships then oil now |
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