How ISIS Got So Strong

How ISIS Got So Strong, So Fast 

Ricochet News

November 16, 2015

By Herbert E Meyer

Decades ago in London, a rising English journalist named Paul Johnson was interviewing Prime Minister Harold Macmillan about the upcoming election. Assuming that Macmillan wanted to talk about one of his party’s central campaign issues — how to revive Britain’s struggling economy and the new Tory healthcare plan — Johnson asked one of those bland questions that give politicians the elbow room to blather on about whatever they want: “Prime Minister, what worries you the most?”

Macmillan’s reply, “Events, dear boy. Events!” was so unexpected, and so clever, that decades later, Johnson, who by this time had become one of Britain’s greatest historians, would recount it gleefully to anyone who had the good sense and the good fortune (including me) to spend an evening with him.

Well, an Event just changed the course of history.

Until last week, “ISIS” was a minor political issue that only a few of the more hawkish GOP candidates for president wanted to talk about. Now, after the attacks in Paris, “ISIS” may well emerge as the dominant issue of the 2016 presidential election.

Before we all start arguing over what to do about ISIS, let’s take some time to try and understand how it got so strong, so fast. How did a terrorist group that barely existed five years ago pull off an obviously well-planned and co-ordinated attack in Paris, bring down a Russian jetliner over Egypt and, most importantly, take over vast swaths of territory in the Mideast and create what amounts to a twenty-first century Caliphate?

I can give you the correct answer in two words — Barack Obama — but that’s a soundbite rather than an explanation. Since our survival depends on getting this right, I’m going to take a bit more time and space than usual to illuminate ISIS’s path to power. Please be patient, and when you start squirming in your chair, remind yourself of that wonderful story about the day Richard Feynman, one of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, was awarded the Nobel prize. A young reporter called him and said: “Please explain to me in thirty seconds what you did to win the Nobel prize.” Feynman replied: “Kid, if I could explain it in thirty seconds, it wouldn’t be worth a Nobel prize.”

Why We Didn’t Bring the Boys Home in 1945

When World War II ended in 1945, all we wanted to do was bring home our troops. We’re Americans, after all, so bringing the boys home was at the top of our national agenda. But we didn’t. The people who led our country then — Democratic President Harry Truman, Republican members of the Senate — understood that the war wasn’t over just because the bullets had stopped flying. It takes a long time for things to become stable — in the same sense that after a forest fire is extinguished, rangers stay on patrol for days, or even weeks, just in case there’s a flare-up long after the fire seemed to be out. Moreover, the post-war leaders of Japan and Germany, such as the great Konrad Adenauer, asked us to stay. Very quietly, without any public acknowledgement of what they were doing, they told our leaders they were afraid that if we pulled out the lunatics might return.

So we kept tens of thousands of troops in Germany and Japan. They’re still there, and it’s been more than 70 years since the war ended. No one knows how to calculate the cost; it’s probably hundreds of trillions of dollars. And there’s no way to know for sure what would have happened if we’d have brought our troops home in 1945. But it doesn’t take much effort to imagine what might have happened. If a mob of Nazis had hit Munich in 1946, or a battalion of fascist military officers had attacked Osaka or Tokyo in 1946 or 1947, the newly-formed governments of these countries wouldn’t have been able to cope. They were still too shell-shocked, too disorganized, too distrustful of one another, too busy clearing rubble off the streets.

That’s why the decision by the US and our allies to keep our troops in place when World War II ended will go down as one of history’s very greatest decisions. We kept things stable, we kept the lunatics from coming back and causing chaos, we gave the fragile new governments of Germany and Japan the time and breathing space they needed to get a grip on things and learn to become modern, successful members of the world community of nations.

Now let’s look at Iraq. Whether you think our 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good idea or a ghastly mistake — we can argue about this another time — the invasion happened and in the real world, there’s no rewind button. We made huge mistakes, as always happens in combat, but by the end of 2008 our troops had won the war. Iraq was stable, intact, at peace — surely you watched those extraordinary videos of millions of Iraqis voting in elections and proudly holding up their purple thumbs — and some measure of normal, modern life was starting to emerge. 

Electricity was back on, oil production was rising, restaurants were open and packed with customers every evening, and I even remember reading that the Baghdad Philharmonic, or whatever the orchestra was called, had announced a concert schedule for the upcoming season. In short, the Armed Forces of the United States had — once again, bless them — done a great job and won an incredible victory.

Then we elected Barack Obama as our president, and he pulled out the troops. He and the leaders of those countries that had fought along side us did in Iraq precisely what President Truman and his counterparts in England, France, Canada and elsewhere, didn’t do in 1945. Truman and his fellow leaders stood up to public opinion, and stayed. Obama and his counterparts pandered to public opinion, and pulled out.

Of course the lunatics came back. Of course the new leaders of Iraq were too new to power, too shell-shocked, too busy fighting among themselves, to stop them. It was obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, a basic grasp of history, and one iota of political courage — in other words, none of the over-educated idiots in Washington — that this was going to happen. It’s a classic example of the old saying that the first lesson of history is that we don’t learn the lessons of history.

It’s Obama’s Blunder, Not Bush’s

Reader, there is no possibility that ISIS would even exist today — let alone be powerful enough to cause havoc throughout the world — had President Obama kept our troops in place in Iraq. And it was his decision to pull out, not President Bush’s decision to invade, that will go down as one of history’s greatest blunders. Yes, I know this is a controversial point, and that half of you reading the previous sentence are about to explode. But before you do, bear with me a bit longer while we conduct what scientists call a thought-experiment:

Imagine that we’d pulled our troops out of Germany in 1945 and then, in 1946, a mob of armed Nazis re-surfaced and threw the Bonn government, and Western Europe itself, into chaos. Can’t you just picture the scorn and abuse that would have been hurled at President Truman by his political enemies for throwing away the victory his predecessor had fought and won?

President Obama isn’t likely to acknowledge that his decision to pull our troops out of Iraq has been a catastrophic failure. He’ll find a way, yet again, to blame it all on President Bush. And while he’ll make some cosmetic changes to our military strategy designed to show he’s tough, he probably won’t unleash our armed forces so they could actually eliminate the threat from ISIS. He’ll leave that to his successor.

I said earlier, the first lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. Perhaps I overstated it just a bit. Sometimes we do learn from experience, and if the experience of the last century is any guide, the lessons some of us have learned are these:

     First, the world can never be safe, but the world is safer when the US plays a leading role.

     Second, diplomacy is important, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for military power. You cannot contain thugs, or negotiate with them.

     You must obliterate them, and not lose sleep over collateral damage.

As of right now, our nation is showing no signs of having learned either of these lessons.

That’s why the question every candidate for president now must answer is: What will you do about ISIS? The election will depend on whichever candidate comes up with the best answer. So will our lives.

 

Ralph Gates Mission at 86 - 2011

Ralph Gates is on a mission. “No, not that kind of mission,” he's quick to add. It's his favorite joke these days. No, his mission is to capture on DVD the life stories of “the passionate people of Park City.” That's what he calls us. At 86 years old, he's in a hurry to get the job done.

Gates is that rare individual who seems to be more interested in telling other people's stories than in telling his own. This in spite of the fact that his is more interesting than most. Talk to him long enough and the story eventually emerges.

Gates joined the Army in 1944, expecting to be an infantryman in the European theatre. Instead, the 20-year-old college engineering student was secretly shipped to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked under Oppenheimer developing and building the first Plutonium “A”bomb, the one that resulted in the surrender of Japan in July of 1945. But that's not what he wants to talk about.

Born in Chicago, Ill., Gates grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. “I never told anybody in town that I was born in Chicago because I didn't want my pals to know I was a “Yankee,” he chuckles. As a boy, Gates wandered the nearby woods, swimming in ponds and hunting quail and doves. “Back in the 1930s, Nashville was a small town, only about 160,000 people. I didn't have to go far to be out in the country.”

As a teenager, Gates frequented the “Grand Old Opry” and danced to all the big name bands that came to town.

After graduating from high school at age 17, Gates enrolled at nearby Vanderbilt University and studied chemical engineering. But the war was on and he was eager to join the fight. He was turned away and given a student deferment the first time the tried to join. “Don't worry,” said the recruiter. “We'll call you up when we need you.”

The call came a year later and Gates soon found himself caught up in the most secret war project of the last century. His job at Los Alamos was to melt and form the highly explosive concoction of TNT and other chemicals that encased the plutonium and triggered the nuclear fission reaction. “We used steam to heat up the TNT in a big sugar melting pot,” says Gates. “It was dangerous, yes, but our lives weren't any more important than the foot soldiers in the foxholes.”

Gates recalls having lunch with Oppenheimer. “He'd come into the lunchroom and sit down at a table with the rest of us. He was just a regular guy, a good manager.”

Gates was discharged soon after the war ended and went on to complete his engineering degree at Vanderbilt and a master's degree at MIT. He then embarked on a 40-year career as an engineer in product development and technical sales with Stauffer Chemical Co. His job took him successively from Illinois, to Connecticut, to New York.

After retiring in 1990, Gates and his wife, Fran Kennedy, moved to Park City. They had visited Utah to ski in the 1980s, and knew that they wanted to live here. “As soon as we got here we wanted to build a fence around the place,” he laughs. Avid outdoor enthusiasts, they took to the mountains with gusto. “There aren't too many places that we didn't visit skiing, back packing, hiking or camping in the Uintas and the state and national parks,” he says. Sadly, Kennedy passed away ten years ago and Gates has been going it alone since then.

The story Gates really wants to talk about began just a few years ago. It seems he's always had an interest in film and video. “ I was shooting home movies of the family way back in the 1930s,” he says. “I got a camcorder several years ago and a big idea came to me. My passion, my mission now is to record visual life stories of mostly ordinary people who have lived through some of the most turbulent times in our history. I don't want their descendants to just read about them or hear about them years later. I want them to feel their emotions as they watch them talking in living color.”

Gates continues: “The world is changing so swiftly now because of unlimited communications that such experiences will surely be helpful in guiding our lives positively. Admittedly, that's my 'constrictive optimism' coming through, but it's the only way to go!”

He began by taping fellow war veterans, but has since expanded into taping many prominent Parkites. He calls them “the passionate people of Park City, people with imagination, initiative and perseverance” and believes they have “immigrant” genes in them. “How could they be better described. Some came for economic reasons. Some came because they have the 'free spirit' gene. They think, 'hey, there's something better I want to do.' That's what the ski bums were all about. They wanted to ski so badly they would do anything to stay here. They took two or three jobs, bought houses dirt cheap and made a lot of money. They have the immigrant gene too.”

In the last few years Gates has taped the life stories of many local residents who have since passed on, including Jim Santy, Roger Harlan and Mel Fletcher – all men who figured prominently in the history of this town. “That can happen to anybody at anytime,” he reminds us. “That's why any time anybody in town retires I'm in their office the next day to do their life story.”

To date he's taped over a hundred life stories, among them those of Mayor Williams, Gary Cole, Blair Feulner, Nan Chalat-Noaker [editor of the Park Record], Lisa Needham, Lew Fine, Sally Elliott, Tom Clyde, Jack Wells, Bill Coleman, Tom Cammermeyer, Meeche White, Tom Ward, and the list goes on.

What began as a labor of love has evolved into a business of sorts for Gates. Though he initially did his video stories for free, he now charges a modest fee for his stories. “I can only do about two stories a week, so I'm not getting rich doing this,” he says.

Gates admits to a growing sense of urgency regarding his work. “I really think these stories are important and should be kept somewhere in Park City so others can see them. I'm open to any ideas for a place where t growing library of life story DVDs can live. Like I said, I'm on a mission man!”

For more information about Life Stories, or to suggest a home for them, contact Gates at frkenn@comcast.net

VITAL STATISTICS

Favorite things to do: ski, hike, sing with the Park City Singers, play bridge with friends at the

senior center

Favorite foods: anything except okra and very spicy food.

Favorite reading: biographies, scientific journals, historical fiction and poetry from the 1800s.

Favorite music: classical, country & western and vintage big bands

HEAD: PC “Life Story” Video Man Built “A” Bomb

DECK: He worked at Los Alamos in waning months of WW II

QUOTE: “As soon as we got here we wanted to build a fence around the place.”

CAPTION: Ralph Gates is on a mission to record the stories of as many Park City residents as possible. He's searching for a public place where his “life story” DVDs can be viewed free of charge.

Ted Honsler story

From: Archie Bleyer

Subject: Re: WWII in Park Record

Date: May 27, 2008 11:06:20 AM MDT

To: Ralph Gates

Cc: Moe Bleyer

Ralph,

What a wonderful story and congratulations to you for helping Ted.  HIs daughter must be most appreciative.  You have helped resolve in Ted two-thirds of a century of life of guilt, anquish, and embarassment that I saw in my parents. 

 

My father was 19 when he left Germany.  About the only experience he talked about was Ellis Island and the Statue of LIberty.  Moe's father was a WWII Vet and always talked about his experiences.  I worried much about the two of them meeting for the first time at our wedding.  They had a great time while we were on our honeymoon.

Archie

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Ralph Gates <frkenn@comcast.net> wrote:

On May 25, 2008, at 10:04 AM, Archie Bleyer wrote:

Ralph,
Thanks for sending me the issue with you and Max Miller on the front cover.
I was particularly impressed that you encouraged Ted Honseler to be featured.
My paternal grandfather died during WWI fighting for the Germans.
My father left Germany in 1929 to avoid being recruited by oppression into the uprising campaign.
My parents were unable to speak about their experiences throughout their lives; it was too painful.
Archie

Thanks for the response, Archie!

       Maybe you will it interested in how I happened to get Ted Honseler to the meeting of WW11 vets.
       I had heard about Ted from a friend of his daughter who lives here in Park City.  About a month before our get together to celebrate Armistice Day (now Veteran's Day, of course) I had contacted his daughter and told her I wanted to invite him to our group.  She vetoed it in no uncertain terms because, as she said, he didn't want people to know he was on the other side of the fence.  So I did not make any further attempt until the day before our special meeting when I attempted to call the daughter one more time.  She wasn't there but Ted answered the phone!!  I was a little reluctant to ask him directly so I told him that we old Vets were getting together for dinner.  I guess I squeezed him a little  but eventually he said yes he would be willing to come.
       None of the rest of the group knew anything about him or my contacts with him.  So when I picked him up and brought him no one had any idea who he was and certainly no inkling that he was a German vet.
       He and I were the last two to arrive in the special dinning room and, in turn, the other guys were one at a time giving a very short synopsis of their war time experience.  When it became Ted's term I stood up and said I wanted to introduce a new found friend who had also been in the war for a couple of years.  I proceeded to inform them that "Ted" and I had a couple of things in common.  Firstly, that both our fathers had been in the trenches in France in the First WW!   Secondly, that we were probably the youngest two vets here who had seen two years of service.  And on top of that he was only 80 and I, 82.  They immediately realized that Ted must have gone in when he was only 16 (Later they found out that was indeed true and he hadn't lied about his age.)
       Please realize that the group still had no idea that he was German.  So next I said there was something quite dissimilar about Ted's and my experience.  Namely, when I returned home to Nashville,  everything was as peaceful and as undisturbed as when I had left two years earlier.  But when Ted returned to his home, it wasn't there.  It and the whole town had been totally destroyed!  There faces showed bewilderment and as I found out shortly,  they were wondering where earthquakes or hurricanes had done this back then.
       But when I said his hometown was Essen, Germany there were a couple of soft gasps of realization.  Particularly from the four or so of the group who had been in the 8th Airforce  -- two as pilots of B-17's and two as P-38 or P-51 fighter pilots who had escorted the bombers as they leveled Essen!!
       My last part of his story was letting them now that Ted was a little reluctant earlier to come tonight because he always felt he had been on the "other side of the fence" but I had tried to assure him there was no longer any fence.  There was actually evidence of tears in some of the eyes when Ted, in his strong German accent, told of his mother not letting him join the "Hitler Youth" when he was of typical Boy Scout age and that was where the fun seemed to be when 12 years old.  He was drafted when 16 and sent to the Eastern Front to fight the Russians where he was eventually captured when the Russians, shortly before the end of the war, over ran their defenses near Budapest.  The Russians were racing for Berlin and he and many others were lucky and left to fend for themselves rather than winding up in the hands of Russians as prisoners.  So he made his way to Salz!burg where he surrendered to an American Prisoner of war camp.
       Eventually American trucks took him back to Essen.  He said there were no buildings standing but his parents were alive and living in a bunker.  Rebuilding his town started immediately but he emigrated to the US in a few years with his young wife, sponsored by a relative who had already been here for a number of years
       A couple of weeks later, I got his visual autobiography down with my camcorder.  How great for me has been this whole experience!!     --  Ralph

--
Archie Bleyer, MD
St. Charles Medical Center, Bend, Oregon
Cell 541-610-4782
Office 541-383-6998

Pictures you don't see every day

Here are some very rare pics you don't see everyday.......
 

 
A 10 x 15-foot wooden shed where the "Harley-Davidson Motor Company  " started out in 1903
 
 
Testing football helmets in 1912
 
 
A bar in New York City, the night before prohibition began,1920
 
 
Mount Rushmore Before Carving, 1920s
 
 
Traffic jam in New York, 1923
 
 
A quiet little job at a crocodile farm in St. Augustine, Florida, 1926(UPDATE: well, an alligator farm of course, as Roy notes in the comments below)
 
 
World economic crisis, 1929
 
 
Central Park in 1930
 
 
Last four couples standing at a Chicago dance marathon, ca. 1930
 
 
Meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club, early 1930s
 
 
Confederate and Union soldiers shake hands across the wall at the 1938 reunion for the Veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg
 
 
When they realized women were using their sacks to make clothes for their children, flour mills of the 30s started using flowered fabric for their sacks, 1939
 
 
NY, Coney Island, 1940
 
 
The thirty-six men needed to fly and service a B-17E in 1942
 
 
A man begging for his wife  's forgiveness inside Divorce Court. Chicago, 1948
 
 
Three young women wash their clothes in Central Park during a water shortage. New York, 1949
 
 
19 year-old Shigeki Tanaka was a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima and went on to win the 1951 Boston Marathon. The crowd was silent as he crossed the finish line. (UPDATE: As Peter notes in the comments below, "Tanaka was not exactly "a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima  " — when the bomb was dropped, he was at home, about 20 miles from the site. He saw a light and heard a distant rumble, but was personally unaffected by the bomb.")
 
 
Florida  's last Civil War veteran, Bill Lundy, poses with a jet fighter, 1955
 
 
NASA scientists with their board of calculations, 1960  ′s
 
 
Muhammad Ali  's fists after the fight with Cooper, 1963
 
 
New York firemen play a game after a fire in a billiard parlor, 1969
 
 
An abandoned baby sleeps peacefully in a drawer at the Los Angeles Police Station, 1971
 
 
Boy hiding in a TV set. Boston, 1972 by Arthur Tress
 
 
A spectator holds up a sign at the Academy Awards, April 1974
 
 
Robert De Niro  's cab driver license. In order to get into character for the film Taxi Driver, he obtained his own hack license and would pick-up/drive customers around in New York City.
 
 
Nancy Reagan sits on the lap of Mr. T, dressed as Santa, 1983
 
 
Ronald Reagan wearing sweatpants on Air Force One, 1985
 

Shortly before Pearl Harbor

August 7,1941

Pearl Harbor was still 4 months in the future.  

My mother, father, three brothers and I were returning from our annual two weeks vacation on Onaway Island in Sunset lake in the Chain of Lakes near Waupaca, Wisconsin, heading home to Nashville, Tennessee.  Dad's birthday was July 31 and mother had arranged for all of us to spend a night overlooking  Lake Michigan and Grant Park at the historic Stevens Hotel on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. 

My two younger brothers, Larry and Carl, were eleven  and nine years old.   Brother Daniel was nineteen and a second year student at the University of Illinois.  I was in my senior year in high school.  

We had gone to sleep fairly early and at about two o'clock in the morning, Dad awakened Daniel and me and said "I want you to come and look out the window and listen!"  As soon as we came close to the window we could hear a quiet "brump, brump, brump bump bump" sound of a drum beat and then saw down below on Michigan Avenue soldiers marching.  I remember him saying :"We will soon be in another war".Shortl

Money sent home by illegals

Another early morning musing    5/18/10

I don't fully understand why these crazy ideas wake me up at such awful hours, like 4:15 this morning, and eliminate the possibility of any further badly needed sleep.  I supposedly should get a good 7 or so hours of sleep at night for good health at my age.

It must be my sub-conscience or something like that, with which I was wrestling, while sleeping, over a discussion I heard on a TV or radio program a day or so ago.  It was part of some arguments about the "illegal immigration problem" that is rising to center stage with the recent Arizona law -- that will surely "cause all sorts of racial discrimination" -- according to many of the supposedly well-meaning people in our country, in Mexico, and even in the UN (!) and the rest of the world.  To top it all off we are led to believe that many of these well-meaning people have never even read the law.  So emotions and prejudices run wild.

So here is just one more log to throw on the fire.  I believe some part of the illegal alien controversy is responsible for the most efficient and effective from of international relief that we can give.  Consider $100 that goes directly from the working illegal to his family.

Every time we pay some of these illegals, part of that money goes quickily and directly to a needy family in Mexico as an example.  If we were to help those same needy families through typical government largesse, that $100 would be collected in taxes, moved to Washington, subjected to applicable government overhead, sent  to some agency or bureaucracy in Mexico, subjected to their overhead and finally trickled down to the family.  How much would they get?  -- $10 perhaps?

I wouldn't deny that I am postulating a favorable, legitimate use of the directly sent $100.  Maybe some would go toward drugs, etc., but I believe most of the illegals send it for better use.

So in one sense we who pay the illegals are making contributions that may be even more effective and efficient than if we had given $100 to our church, synagog,  or some non-profit relief organization for their distribution.

Perhaps we should consider giving  the "Payor" a tax deduction.

Expatriots - Beverly, Pauline, and Hope

Carpe Diem!!  Carpe Diem!!   (12/17/07)

Dear Beverly, Pauline, and Hope,

I am inclined to awaken in the wee hours of the moment with ideas spinning around in my head that occasionally seem magically simple (to me, that is!) and I have to write them down -- perhaps to forget appropriately or frequently to pursue.

This early morning I want to tell you how excited I am about your brief conversation around the bridge table yesterday, 12/17/07, when you all recounted a variety of experiences as temporary expatriates (?)  in Europe after WW ll.  

When I tried to tell you how exciting I felt your conversation was, the immediate tendency seemed  to be an attempt to deprecate the importance of your experiences.  Please admit to something more realistic.  While there may have been many other women is similar situations, your were unique as American wives and mothers (in addition to other working responsibilities you may have had) in a European culture that is changing and, some years from now, may be remembered wistfully, fearfully, joyously, or even angrily.

That genre of experiences will surely be written by others and valued historically.  But how much more prized  it would be to see and here directly from you in unrehearsed and casual interplay!  Whatever might result from his would be for you alone to control.  It is my humble but strong opinion that your descendants would prize this highly.  I can promise you that because of my experiences already with other camcorder tapes that I have made, put on VHS or DVD format and given to the participants for their children and grandchildren.

So please think seriously about getting together again the first meeting of the Senior Citizens after New Years, 1/3/08, and spending some relaxed time in front of my camcorder.  It would not be appropriate to do anything more in planning for this other than just to recall now a variety of daily things that were a part of your life.  If you happened to have an interview with the Crowned Heads of Europe or the Pope  that would be of interest but certainly not the main thrust of this exercise.

Can you imagine how interesting it would be for you if you could see and hear you parents or grandparents talk about their lives -- perhaps in the "old country" if they were immigrants, or during the "roaring twenties" or the depression.  We live in changing times now, perhaps momentously so and I am reminded of that WW ll song  --  "The last time I saw Paris, her heart was young and gay, no matter how they change her, I'll remember her that way".  So let's remember how Europe was not too many years ago.

Long time war with Islam

 

Why the Marine Hymn Contains the Verse "To the Shores of Tripoli"

 

 

Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago the United States had declared war on Islam and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!

 

At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic.

 

They attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms.    Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their government and family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.

 

These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.

 

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain.      When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France. However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.

 

Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy.    Beginning in 1784, seventeen years before he would become president, Thomas Jefferson became America’s Minister to France.    That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States rather than engaging them in war.

 

In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Dye of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000.   It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further payments.    Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who together could force the Islamic states into peace.     A disinterested Congress decided to pay the ransom.

 

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli's ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens, and why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

 

The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran that all nations who would not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

 

Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages.    The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to over twenty percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800.

 

Jefferson was disgusted.   Shortly after his being sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every year forthcoming.     That changed everything. Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his demand.    The Pasha responded by cutting down the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the United States.     Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers immediately followed suit.     Jefferson, until now, had been against America raising a naval force for anything beyond coastal defense, but, having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thuggery for long enough, decided that is was finally time to meet force with force.

 

He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would never forget.    Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to cause to be done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war would justify.

 

When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both the will and the right to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to Tripoli.    The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years, and raged up again in 1815.    The bravery of the U.S. Marine Corps in these wars led to the line to the shores of Tripoli in the Marine Hymn, and they would forever be known as leathernecks for the leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.

 

Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of their prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply.

 

America had a tradition of religious tolerance, the fact that Jefferson, himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the world had ever seen.    A religion based on supremacism, whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers, was unacceptable to him.     His greatest fear was that someday this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to the United States.

 

This should bother every American.    That Muslims have brought about women-only classes and swimming times at taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving on juries where Muslim defendants are being judged; Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities; ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger King locations because the picture on the wrapper looks similar to the Arabic script for Allah; public schools are pulling pork from their menus; on and on and on and on.

 

Is it death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to i? Most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day across America.    By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda. Sadly, it appears that today's America's leaders would rather be politically correct than victorious!