When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists ( History ... The Barbary Pirates )

Pajamas Media ^ | May 27, 2008 | Michael Weiss

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Back in 1784, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had to decide whether to appease or stand up to armed Middle Eastern pirates. Sound familiar?

John McCain and Barack Obama are now engaged in a long-distance dispute over whether talking to America’s enemies is integral to America’s security (with neither one wishing to talk to poor Hillary Clinton any longer).

McCain has not so subtly assailed Obama as an “appeaser” for his stated willingness to sit down with the Iranian leadership about its nuclear weapons program and sponsorship of jihadism in Iraq — and never mind for now if that leadership consists of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile, Obama has repeatedly labeled McCain a kind of hyper-Bush militarist of the shoot first, sign treaties later school of foreign policy. McCain has hinted at Chamberlain and Munich, always a histrionic conversation-ender in matters of these sort, and Obama has sheepishly downplayed the Iranian threat by contrasting it against the Soviet one, and, without any hint of irony, indicating Kennedy’s talks with Khrushchev in Vienna, and Reagan’s momentous mini-summit with Gorbachev in Reykjavik as proof that toughness and diplomacy are not mutually exclusive concepts. (One witty editorial in The New York Times reminded Obama that Camelot’s finest hour was not its Austrian kibitz with the Russian premier, an event that laid all the psychological bricks, so to speak, for the erection of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis.)

Oddly though, in their rush to analogize by way of chivvying each other, neither candidate has actually pulled an example relevant to the region of the globe now under discussion.latter eventually winning out.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks,...excellent article...

I want to include the first portion for the references:

************************EXCERPT* see Link at post #20 ******************

Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates
Christopher Hitchens

America’s first confrontation with the Islamic world helped forge a new nation’s character.

When I first began to plan my short biography of Thomas Jefferson, I found it difficult to research the chapter concerning the so-called Barbary Wars: an event or series of events that had seemingly receded over the lost horizon of American history. Henry Adams, in his discussion of our third president, had some boyhood reminiscences of the widespread hero-worship of naval officer Stephen Decatur, and other fragments and shards showed up in other quarries, but a sound general history of the subject was hard to come by. When I asked a professional military historian—a man with direct access to Defense Department archives—if there was any book that he could recommend, he came back with a slight shrug.

But now the curious reader may choose from a freshet of writing on the subject. Added to my own shelf in the recent past have been The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World, by Frank Lambert (2005); Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror 1801–1805, by Joseph Wheelan (2003); To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines, by A. B. C. Whipple (1991, republished 2001); and Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation, by Joshua E. London (2005). Most recently, in his new general history, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, the Israeli scholar Michael Oren opens with a long chapter on the Barbary conflict. As some of the subtitles—and some of the dates of publication—make plain, this new interest is largely occasioned by America’s latest round of confrontation in the Middle East, or the Arab sphere or Muslim world, if you prefer those expressions.

In a way, I am glad that I did not have the initial benefit of all this research. My quest sent me to some less obvious secondary sources, in particular to Linda Colley’s excellent book Captives, which shows the reaction of the English and American publics to a slave trade of which they were victims rather than perpetrators. How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night?

Some of this activity was hostage trading and ransom farming rather than the more labor-intensive horror of the Atlantic trade and the Middle Passage, but it exerted a huge effect on the imagination of the time—and probably on no one more than on Thomas Jefferson. Peering at the paragraph denouncing the American slave trade in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, later excised, I noticed for the first time that it sarcastically condemned “the Christian King of Great Britain” for engaging in “this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” The allusion to Barbary practice seemed inescapable.

One immediate effect of the American Revolution, however, was to strengthen the hand of those very same North African potentates: roughly speaking, the Maghrebian provinces of the Ottoman Empire that conform to today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Deprived of Royal Navy protection, American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. The infant United States had therefore to decide not just upon a question of national honor but upon whether it would stand or fall by free navigation of the seas.

One of the historians of the Barbary conflict, Frank Lambert, argues that the imperative of free trade drove America much more than did any quarrel with Islam or “tyranny,” let alone “terrorism.” He resists any comparison with today’s tormenting confrontations. “The Barbary Wars were primarily about trade, not theology,” he writes. “Rather than being holy wars, they were an extension of America’s War of Independence.”

[verga]

Thank you for the Link

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More ...from the Library of Congress:

America and the Barbary Pirates:
An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe

by Gerard W. Gawalt

Gerard W. Gawalt is the manuscript specialist for early American history in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Ruthless, unconventional foes are not new to the United States of America. More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States made its first attempt to fight an overseas battle to protect its private citizens by building an international coalition against an unconventional enemy. Then the enemies were pirates and piracy. The focus of the United States and a proposed international coalition was the Barbary Pirates of North Africa.

Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) were the scourge of the Mediterranean. Capturing merchant ships and holding their crews for ransom provided the rulers of these nations with wealth and naval power. In fact, the Roman Catholic Religious Order of Mathurins had operated from France for centuries with the special mission of collecting and disbursing funds for the relief and ransom of prisoners of Mediterranean pirates.

Before the United States obtained its independence in the American Revolution, 1775-83, American merchant ships and sailors had been protected from the ravages of the North African pirates by the naval and diplomatic power of Great Britain. British naval power and the tribute or subsidies Britain paid to the piratical states protected American vessels and crews. During the Revolution, the ships of the United States were protected by the 1778 alliance with France, which required the French nation to protect "American vessels and effects against all violence, insults, attacks, or depredations, on the part of the said Princes and States of Barbary or their subjects."

After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.

Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute, as he later testified in words that have a particular resonance today. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully "endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation." Jefferson argued that "The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace." Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. "Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association," Jefferson remembered, but there were "apprehensions" that England and France would follow their own paths, "and so it fell through."

Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both." "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."

Jefferson's plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war. The United States's relations with the Barbary states continued to revolve around negotiations for ransom of American ships and sailors and the payment of annual tributes or gifts. Even though Secretary of State Jefferson declared to Thomas Barclay, American consul to Morocco, in a May 13, 1791, letter of instructions for a new treaty with Morocco that it is "lastly our determination to prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form, and to any people whatever," the United States continued to negotiate for cash settlements. In 1795 alone the United States was forced to pay nearly a million dollars in cash, naval stores, and a frigate to ransom 115 sailors from the dey of Algiers. Annual gifts were settled by treaty on Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli.

When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."

The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."

In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.

For anyone interested in the further pursuit of information about America's first unconventional, international war in the primary sources, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress holds manuscript collections of many of the American participants, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington (see the George Washington Papers), William Short, Edward Preble, Thomas Barclay, James Madison, James Simpson, James Leander Cathcart, William Bainbridge, James Barron, John Rodgers, Ralph Izard, and Albert Gallatin.

[SJackson]

What I find interesting in the article is that in the early years of the Republic we actually did negotiate with the petty Islamist rulers of North Africa. In fact, one year we paid nearly 20% of the national budget as tribute in return for promises that US shipping would be left alone. The attacks didn't stop, of course. For as soon as we paid off one tyrant others demanded the same. Lesson learned?

Yes, we followed the European pattern, necessitated by virtue of our inability to project force. A problem we solved, leading to a standing navy. Appeasement was rejected.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More:

Regarding the Constitution and Declaration of War...and the Barbary Pirates...FR Thread by Freeper Congressman Billybob

Commentary: Are we at war?

*************************EXCERPT INTRO********************

Posted on Thu 19 Sep 2002 10:59:47 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob

By John Armor From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk Published 9/19/2002 11:31 AM

HIGHLANDS, N.C., Sept. 19 (UPI) -- The United States does not legitimately go to war because the president says so. Or because the United Nations, or NATO, or any other organization says so. Or even because some other nation commits an act of war against it.

The only legal way for the United States to go to war is stated in the Constitution, which gives Congress the power "To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal...." The Framers gave that power to Congress, and only Congress, because they were mindful of European wars begun by kings, without the consent of the people who paid the price in blood and taxes.

So, are we now at war? Contrary to what many careless commentators have said and written for months, we are at war now. Why? Because Congress has already acted as the Constitution requires.

Here is the operative text of Senate Joint Resolution 23, passed by the Senate on Sept. 14, 2001, and included by the House in the Anti-Terrorism Act, passed on Sept. 18, 2001: "This joint resolution may be cited as the 'Authorization for Use of Military Force'.

"(a) IN GENERAL That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

(The boilerplate and whereas clauses have been left out of the seven US declarations of war that are discussed here.)

Nowhere is the phrase "declaration of war" used. Isn't that necessary?

No. The Constitution requires no particular language, unlike the Presidential Oath, which is specified word for word. Two centuries ago this year, Congress committed us to war against the Barbary Pirates -- Muslims operating on the high seas and across the boundaries of several nations.

Then, as now, the declaration of war applied to those attacking the United States wherever and whenever they could be found. It did not name a nation as the enemy:

"An Act for the Protection of the Commerce and Seamen of the United States, Against the Tripolitan Cruisers.

"... it shall be lawful fully to equip, officer, man, and employ such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite by the President of the United States, for protecting effectually the commerce and seamen thereof on the Atlantic ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas.

"...to subdue, seize and make prize of all vessels, goods and effects, belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, or to his subjects,... and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify, and may, in his opinion, require."

(Feb. 6, 1802.)

This 200-year-old declaration is open-ended, in the same way and for the same reasons as SJR 23. The enemy was not the product of a single nation-state, or alliance of states. The declaration of war could not have the clarity of those against Germany and Japan in World War II:

"... that a state of war exists between the Imperial Government of Japan and the Government and the people of the United States...."

"... that a state of war exists between the Imperial German Government and the Government and the people of the United States...."

It does not matter that Congress used broad definitions for current circumstances. The Constitution only requires that a majority of the House and the Senate concur. They have.

The president has no legal role in a declaration of war; however, he has a leadership role. He must present to the Congress and to the people the reasons why the nation should take up arms. President Thomas Jefferson did that concerning the Barbary Pirates. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did that concerning Germany and Japan. President George Bush did that concerning Iraq in 1991. President George W. Bush has done that concerning the terrorists and those who support and harbor them, in 2001.

Congress could have acted with more clarity. Here is the operative text of House Joint Resolution 63, introduced on Sept. 13, 2001, by five members of the House:

"Congress hereby declares that a state of war exists between the United States of America and any entity determined by the President to have planned, carried out, or otherwise supported the attacks against the United States on September 11 , 2001.

"The President is authorized to use United States Armed Forces and all other necessary resources of the United States Government against any entity determined by the President to have planned, carried out, or otherwise supported the attacks ... to bring the conflict to a successful termination."

The same day, nine other members of the House introduced HJR 62, which said:

"... a state of war exists between the United States and

(1) any entity that committed the acts of international terrorism against the United States on September 11, 2001, or commits [such] acts... thereafter; and

(2) any country or entity that has provided or provides support or protection for any [such] entity....

"The President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States... to carry on war against such entities and countries...."

These were free-standing resolutions and used the words "declaration of war." Both of these were tabled and SJR 23 was passed, giving the president the same authority without using those three words.

Had either House resolution passed, even CBS News, the New York Times, and other major media outlets would have noticed, and would not have run stories this year claiming that legal counsel in the White House had concluded that "no authority from Congress was needed" for the president to conduct the war. The correct statement would have been no additional authority was needed, because Congress had already acted.

So, what is the purpose of President Bush's speech this year to the United Nations, and the presentation of the issue of Iraq to Congress this year?

Here is the operative language of the 1991 declaration of war against Iraq:

"Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution."

"(a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized, subject to subsection (b), to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution[s] [Citations omitted.]

"Before exercising the authority granted in subsection (a), the President shall make available to [Congress]... his determination that

(1) the United States has used all appropriate... means to obtain compliance by Iraq with the United Nations Security Council resolutions...; and

(2) that those efforts have not been successful...."

This is a declaration of limited war. The power granted by Congress ended when Iraqi troops were removed from Kuwait; because that was the limit of the UN Resolutions. Why was UN participation mandatory in 1991, but not in 2001? Because then the United States was not directly attacked. It could not then invoke Article V of the UN Charter, the right of self-defense for any nation which is attacked.

Asking Congress to act again in 2002 with respect to Iraq is not a matter of the Constitution but of common sense. Congress will have to vote the money for the war. The additional assent of Congress will demonstrate the commitment of the people to prosecute this war to victory. Note that the United States has already conducted acts of war in the Philippines this year concerning two American missionaries who were held captive. This was done under the 2001 authority and without objection.

Will Congress have the integrity to use the word "war" in the new resolution it will shortly pass? It should, because that is what Congress is confirming. Congress should not hide behind "authorization to use military force." We have military forces to fight our wars. As a colleague who served in the 82nd Airborne said, "Our job is to kill people and break their toys."

It will indicate a lack of commitment and candor, if in the 2002 confirmation -- not declaration -- of the war on Iraq, Congress cannot this time utter the word "war."

The Barbary War example not only makes clear we are "at war" today, it also suggests the extent of this war. That war was a low-grade one across international boundaries. It continued until the second "Treaty of Peace and Amity" in 1816. The American people should understand, and Congress should confirm, that this will be a much smaller war than World War II, Korea, or Vietnam, but no less important to national safety, and likely to last about 10 years.

No war has ever begun with clear knowledge of how long it will last or what it will cost. But this war has already begun, already been declared. Now it is the role of Congress to do what is necessary for victory. Congress has sometimes been deficient in this role, beginning in the American Revolution. We will shortly see whether Congress is deficient in this war.

--

(John Armor is a lawyer who practices in the Supreme Court. His eighth book, "These are the times that try men's souls" (about Thomas Paine), is scheduled to be published next year).

[wastedyears]

We went over there and kicked their butts.

[SJackson]

The clause was inserted in the treaty because the jihadists wouldn’t enter into a treaty with a Christian state, only accept tribute. And was consistant with the times, the US was unique in not having an established state Church, as did all European nations. It wasn’t addressing a mythical separation.

[SJackson]

The article overlooks the most important part about either of the Barbary Pirates war. That the Marine Corps led by Lieutenant Pressley Obannon kicked some butt and solved the problem. Oh, the Navy had a little part in it also. Semper Fi!!! : )

Of course the diplomats stopped O'Bannon and Eaton before they could lay siege to Tripoli with their multi-national force, Arabs and Greeks along with our Marines. They then sold out Eaton and the Bey's brother Hamet, Hamet barely escaping with his life and Eaton dying broke due to unreimbursed debts and expenses of the campaign.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The Paris Peace Treaty of 1783

***********************EXCERPT*****************

As It Appears In Jackson's Oxford Journal England, October 4, 1783

Although Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown in the Fall of 1781 marked the end of the Revolutionary War, minor battles between the British and the colonists continued for another two years. Finally, in February of 1783 George III issued his Proclamation of Cessation of Hostilities, culminating in the Peace Treaty of 1783. Signed in Paris on September 3, 1783, the agreement — also known as the Paris Peace Treaty — formally ended the United States War for Independence.

Representing the United States were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, all of whom signed the treaty.

In addition to giving formal recognition to the U.S., the nine articles that embodied the treaty: established U.S. boundaries, specified certain fishing rights, allowed creditors of each country to be paid by citizens of the other, restored the rights and property of Loyalists, opened up the Mississippi River to citizens of both nations and provided for evacuation of all British forces.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Pentagon Leatherneck]

When I read “Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror 1801–1805”, by Joseph Wheelan I was struck by the similar attitudes and tactics of the enemy to those we encounter today. Some things never change.

TC

[SJackson]

Same motivation, the infidel must bend his knee.

The Ambassador [to England from Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should 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."
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in their report to Congress

A couple related threads. The London book, Victory in Tripoli, is a good one.

Jihad in American History

Victory in Tripoli-How War with the Barbary Pirates teaches us how to fight the war on terror.

Victory in Tripoli: Lessons for the War on Terrorism

Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the US Navy...

[Old Teufel Hunden]

They did conquer the fort at Durna though. After that battle the war was pretty much over. One note, Prince Hamet in grattitude to the Marines presented O’Bannon with the Marmaluke sword which is still the ceremonial sword used by Marine Officers today.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks:

Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror 1801-1805

***************************EXCERPT********************************

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
Two centuries ago, the ostensibly pacifist president Thomas Jefferson launched America’s first war on foreign soil—a war against terror. The enemy was Muslim; the war was waged unconventionally, with commandos, native troops, encrypted intelligence, and foreign bases under short-term alliances. For nearly two hundred years, Barbary pirates had haunted the Mediterranean, enslaving infidels and extorting millions of dollars from European countries in a holy war against Christendom. Newly independent, American ships became a target of piracy. Instead of paying tribute, after his inauguration Jefferson chose to fight. With telling illustrations, Jefferson’s War traces the events surrounding his resolute belief that peace with the Barbary States, and the attainment of Europe’s respect, could be gained only through the "medium of war." Jefferson ordered the new U.S. Navy to Tripoli in 1801, starting the Barbary War that ended in 1805. The war proved that ship-for-ship the U.S. Navy was the equal of any navy afloat. William Eaton’s bold frontal assault on Derna with a fractious army of Arabs, disaffected Tripolitans, European mercenaries, and eight U.S. Marines punctuated the American victory as the marines ran up the Stars and Stripes over the city—the first flag-raising on hostile shores by U.S. troops.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

FR Thread:

America's First War on Terror

*********************EXCERPT INTRO*********************

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in 1786 in London with the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of jihad piracy—murder, enslavement (with ransoming for redemption), and expropriation of valuable commercial assets—emanating from the Barbary states (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, known collectively in Arabic as the Maghrib). During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:

… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should 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 who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

[Monkey Face]

...Some things never change.

Yah, they do. Now the Jihadists are using Western technologies to kill us, even though they claim they want to restore Islam to the status it was before the Infidels came. THAT status has never changed. Stupidity seems to be a prerequisite to being an Islamic terrorist.

[bigheadfred]

Ping

[cvq3842]

Another very good point!

[cvq3842]

Thanks!

[cvq3842]

Also good points. thanks.