Letter: History repeats itself (Thomas Jefferson was fighting Muslim terrorism 200 years ago)

As a World War II veteran I am appalled by the lack of knowledge our Senators and Congresspersons have in discussing the threats that have been covering our nation for the past years.

Every American that reads this letter should understand the background of the Marine Hymn and the phrase, “to the shores of Tripoli.”

One has to wonder why our elected officials (The United States Congress) either fail to read history or tend to dismiss history as untrue facts. Over 200 years ago the United States declared war on Islam and it was Thomas Jefferson who led the charge 17 years before he became president.

Shortly after he was sworn in as third president of the United States, Jefferson received a note from the head of Tripoli demanding $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every year thereafter. This note changed everything.

What is going on now in Syria, Iraq and northern Africa took place over 200 years ago at the height of the eighteenth century, at the time; Muslim pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic.

At the time they attacked ships and held the crews for large ransoms. The hostages who were taken were subject to barbaric treatment. Many of the crews wrote letters home describing the treatment and asking that the ransoms be paid for their release.

These individuals represented at that time the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco and Algiers. At the time they were referred to collectively as the Barbary Coast. At the time the group represented a threat to our new American Republic. Now fast forward to 2015 and much of the same thing is happening.

When will our federal elected officials wake up and realize this has been going on for years and will only grow stronger unless the United States takes a firm approach to the problem the same as we did in World War II and as President Jefferson did when he led the charge over 200 years ago.

THIS IS ISLAM

BRIGITTE GABRIEL'S SPEECH AT THE INTELLIGENCE SUMMIT IN WASHINGTON D.C.

We gather here today to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is not merely cold hard data about numerical strength or armament or disposition of military forces. The most important element of intelligence has to be understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy.

The West has been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim extremist perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah.

I was ten years old when my home exploded around me, burying me under the rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive, as the perpetrators shouted, 'Allah Akbar!' My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word 'infidel.'

I had a crash course in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness, freezing cold, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. At the age of 13, I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends--killed by Muslims. We were not Americans living in New York , or Britons in London . We were Arab Christians living in Lebanon.

As a victim of Islamic terror, I was amazed when I saw Americans waking up on September 12, 2001, and asking themselves 'Why do they hate us?' The psychoanalyst experts were coming up with all sort of excuses as to what did we do to offend the Muslim World. But if America and the West were paying attention to the Middle East they would not have had to ask the question. Simply put, they hate us because we are defined in their eyes by one simple word: 'infidels.'

Under the banner of Islam 'la, ilaha illa Allah, muhammad rasoulu Allah,' (None is god except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) they murdered Jewish children in Israel, massacred Christians in Lebanon, killed Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Syria, Hindus in India, and expelled almost 900,000 Jews from Muslim lands. We Middle Eastern infidels paid the price then. Now infidels worldwide are paying the price for indifference and shortsightedness.

Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn't buy protection. It earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy's eyes. Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamist's are leading us to our demise.

America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about Cahaba and Salafi Islam as the only extreme form of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are wonderful moderates. Closer to the truth are the pictures of the irrational eruption of violence in reaction to the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a Danish newspaper.

From burning embassies, to calls to butcher those who mock Islam, to warnings that the West be prepared for another holocaust, those pictures have given us a glimpse into the real face of the enemy. News pictures and video of these events represent a canvas of hate decorated by different nationalities who share one common ideology of hate, bigotry and intolerance derived from one source: authentic Islam. An Islam that is awakening from centuries of slumber to re-ignite its wrath against the infidel and dominate the world. An Islam which has declared 'Intifada' on the West.

America and the West can no longer afford to lay in their lazy state of overweight ignorance. The consequences of this mental disease are starting to attack the body, and if they don't take the necessary steps now to control it, death will be knocking soon. If you want to understand the nature of the enemy we face, visualize a tapestry of snakes. They slither and they hiss, and they would eat each other alive, but they will unite in a hideous mass to achieve their common goal of imposing Islam on the world.

This is the ugly face of the enemy we are fighting. We are fighting a powerful ideology that is capable of altering basic human instincts. An ideology that can turn a mother into a launching pad of death. A perfect example is a recently elected Hamas official in the Palestinian Territories who raves in heavenly joy about sending her three sons to death and offering the ones who are still alive for the cause. It is an ideology that is capable of offering highly educated individuals such as doctors and lawyers far more joy in attaining death than any respect and stature life in society is ever capable of giving them.

The United States has been a prime target for radical Islamic hatred and terror. Every Friday, mosques in the Middle East ring with shrill prayers and monotonous chants calling death, destruction and damnation down on America and its people. The radical Islamist deeds have been as vile as their words. Since the Iran hostage crisis, more than three thousand Americans have died in a terror campaign almost unprecedented in its calculated cruelty along with thousands of other citizens worldwide.

Even the Nazis did not turn their own children into human bombs, and then rejoice at their deaths as well the deaths of their victims. This intentional, indiscriminate and wholesale murder of innocent American citizens is justified and glorified in the name of Islam.

America cannot effectively defend itself in this war unless and until the American people understand the nature of the enemy that we face. Even after 9/11 there are those who say that we must engage our terrorist enemies, that we must address their grievances. Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our freedom of speech. Their grievance is our democratic process where the rule of law comes from the voices of many not that of just one prophet. It is the respect we instill in our children towards all religions. It is the equality we grant each other as human beings sharing a planet and striving to make the world a better place for all humanity. Their grievance is the kindness and respect a man shows a woman, the justice we practice as equals under the law, and the mercy we grant our enemy. Their grievance cannot be answered by an apology for who or what we are.

Our mediocre attitude of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and hatred wherever they raised their ugly head in the last 30 years, has empowered and strengthened our enemy to ssecure a full scale attack on the very freedoms we cherish in their effort to impose their values and way of life on our civilization.

If we don't wake up and challenge our Muslim community to take action against the terrorists within it, if we don't believe in ourselves as Americans and in the standards we should hold every patriotic American to, we are going to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our children and our country, we must wake up and take action. In the face of a torrent of hateful invective and terrorist murder, America 's learning curve since the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost flat. The longer we lay supine, the more difficult it will be to stand erect.

This is all coming true. A non-patriot pro-Muslim is President of this great country. How can this happen?? APATHY, that's how!!! Send this around.

Brigitte Gabriel is an expert on the Middle East conflict and lectures nationally and internationally on the subject. She's the former news anchor of World News for Middle East television and the founder of AmericanCongressforTruth.com

Civilized men sleep soundly because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. ~ George Orwell

“...The old saying I heard as a schoolchild was “Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute”. Would have been nice to know that until Jefferson we had done quite the opposite: “Whatever they demand for tribute, defense is too much trouble”.”

The original post and several like it that have made the rounds over the past few weeks paint a false picture.

Thomas Jefferson was not the only politician of the early 19th century to take action against the Islamic pirates of the Barbary Coast, nor did his administration accomplish much. It’s arguable that he put the nation at greater risk by moving to dismantle the long-range punch of the US Navy.

The US Navy - such as it was - began its buildup under the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, more in response to the depredations of the French during the Quasi War than anything, and a general realization that no one would take the country seriously, unless it acquired some military strength.

Thomas Jefferson opposed the creation of a blue water Navy: he feared it would encourage imperial ambitions. He attempted to reverse what had been done, and floated a bevy of small gunboats for coastal defense. When the War of 1812 began, the country was lucky that the bureaucracy moved slowly; much of the real fleet was still usable. The gunboats proved helpless against Britain’s Royal Navy.

President Jefferson did not “send in the Marines” - local US officials did that on their own hook because communications were too slow with DC to get anything useful done. Lt Presley O’Bannon and his eight or ten Marines did march from Alexandria to Derna at the head of a scratch regiment of locals. It was a feat of endurance and pluck, but one that mattered hardly at all in the greater conflict.

The unpleasant geostrategic truth was that all seafaring trading nations dealt with the Barbary pirates in various ways, as seemed prudent. All - the United States included - paid ransom or tribute, or took direct military action, or applied diplomacy according to the needs of the moment, and the best guess as to what might succeed. “Millions for defense, not one penny for tribute” was never more than a campaign slogan.

Islamic piracy of the day declined thanks to a combination of factors. The Ottoman Turks roused from their torpor and brought the Barbary provinces under some control; after the final defeat of Napoleon, the British Royal Navy put together a large naval force, which sailed to several Islamic pirate ports, shooting each to pieces in turn. A response that would be condemned today, by wimpy public opinion, and the self-appointed moral arbiters who really think international law has meaning.

But Thomas Jefferson does not deserve credit.

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