The present war on terror is not our first war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. No, 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 Islamic fundamentalist terrorists..
The First Barbary War (1801–1805), also known as the Barbary Coast War or the Tripolitan War was the first war waged by the United States outside national boundaries after gaining independence and unification of the country.
This was the first of two wars fought between the United States of America and Arab-speaking pirates, taking cargoes and enslaving crews. The Arab-speaking pirates were of the North African states known collectively as the Barbary States. These were the independent Sultanate of Morocco, and the three Regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, which were quasi-independent entities nominally belonging to the Ottoman Empire.
They sold many Christians into slavery. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the ”non-Muslim” older men and women as possible so the preferred ”booty” of only young women and children could be collected. Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow. Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created ”eunuch stations” along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.
Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast), although nominally governed by the Ottoman Empire, 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 1784 an American-owned 300 ton brig, the Betsy, was boarded by pirates with sabers between their teeth and pistols in their belts. They took the American crew and cargo away in the holds of their ships. Two months later, two more ships were captured. Twenty-one U.S. crewmen were fettered and pushed past jeering crowds of Muslims to the ruler of Algiers, Hassan, who called them Christian dogs, put them in a dungeon and fed them fifteen ounces of bread per day. Hassan asked for $60,000 dollars as ransom – an old form of income for rulers like Hassan and for the communities they ruled.
In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Upon inquiring “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:
“It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. “
He said, also, that “the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share”
In the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress one of the 6,500 books of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States is the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic ”Barbary” states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.
The U.S. paid Algiers the ransom, and continued to pay up to $1 million per year over the next 15 years for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. Payments in ransom and tribute to the privateering states amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800
On Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha (or Bashaw) of Tripoli, demanded $225,000 from the new administration. (In 1800, Federal revenues totaled a little over $10 million.) Putting his long-held beliefs into practice, Jefferson refused the demand. Consequently, in May 1801, the Pasha declared war on the United States, not through any formal written documents but by cutting down the flagstaff in front of the U.S. Consulate. Algiers and Tunis did not follow their ally in Tripoli.
In response, Jefferson sent a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, they did authorize the President to instruct the commanders of armed vessels of the United States to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli ”and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.”
n response, Jefferson sent a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, they did authorize the President to instruct the commanders of armed vessels of the United States to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli ”and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.”
The schooner USS Enterprise defeated the 14-gun Tripolitan corsair Tripoli after a fierce but one-sided battle on August 1, 1801.
The turning point in the war came with the Battle of Derna (April–May 1805). Ex-consul William Eaton, who went by the rank of general, and US Marine First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon led a mixed force of eight United States Marines and 500 Greek, Arab, and Berber mercenaries on a march across the desert from Alexandria, Egypt to assault and to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. This is the first time in history that the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. This action was memorialized in a line from the Marines’ Hymn—”the shores of Tripoli.”
The Tripoli Monument, the oldest military monument in the U.S., honors the heroes of the First Barbary War: Captain Richard Somers, Lieutenant James Caldwell, James Decatur (brother of Stephen Decatur), Henry Wadsworth, Joseph Israel and John Dorsey. Originally known as the Naval Monument, it was carved of Carrara marble in Italy in 1806 and brought to the United States as ballast on board the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). From its original location in the Washington Navy Yard it was moved to the west terrace of the national Capitol and finally, in 1860, to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland..
We Learn a great Torah lesson from the Kabbalistic classic the Sefer Yetzirah (The book of creation) ,. written by our forefather Abraham In its first chapter, the sacred text
states that
“The end [of a thing] is in its beginning and its beginning is in its end.”
Whatever is to be found at the end of the road, is there at its beginning.
This is a very important lesson. It is written that the Redemption from Edom (this final exile) is related to redemption from the threat of Assur (Iran), who becomes involved in the conflict in “The end of days”
According to the Talmud, very close to the end of history as we have known it.
Egyptian exile has come and gone; so too has the Babylonian, Median, and Greek exile.
We have survived the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, and the many ruthless pogroms
since. We even survived the Holocaust, though, as always, at great costs. And
all of it has been so we can reach a time, according to the prophet Zechariah, when :
“God will be One, and His Name One. “ (chap. 14)
Read more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
http://www.usvetdsp.com/jan07/jeff_quran.htm
Filed under: balance, France, Hamas, insanity, islam, Israel, small news, USA
IDF soldiers sick of late night scrambles on the northern border for false alarms have come up with a unique solution. Many of the false alarms are caused by wild boars and other animals coming in contact with the security fence.
The answer – lion dung from the Ramant Gan Safari placed at strategic intervals to scare the animals away from the fence. The operation is said to have been successful.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/194801
The God intends the creation to be in BALANCE this is why he has given this world advice as found in the Torah, other spiritual texts and writings concerning ethics and other places. Things are supposed to be fair and even. When the sensitive balance between good and evil has been tipped. The eye and heart become dulled. Then one can not see “straight”, or think right. Things become “out of balance” and there is no fairness. When natural law is thwarted and challenged, the imbalance results, there will be a reaction from God eventually. If one tries to alter the natural way. There will be failure. We create imbalance through mistakes by our thought , feelings and actions, this automatically sets into action an equal and opposite force that will stop at nothing to restore matters into the greater harmony and alignment. It is inevitable. If we act only thinking about our wants at the expense of others, in the end we only end up harming ourselves. When we choose to ignore the greater whole and act selfishly we then acting unnaturally. It is unnatural for the human to act in ways that are inhuman. It is insanity. God forbid, if a person doesn’t use their capacity to think and be rational, then they can lose their capacity to think and be rational. God will then arrange situations that will catch us by surprise and force us into seeing that we are thinking and acting irrationally so to bring things back into proper order. God responds to us measure-for-measure. If the world is acting crazy towards you, then you have to ask yourself, “How are you acting crazy towards the world?”
Now concerning insanity what about this :
In our “civilized world”, Israeli officers are being told not to travel to Europe, for fear of being arrested for war crimes:
JERUSALEM (CNN) — Israel’s government on Sunday approved a measure that will give legal protection to its military officers if they are accused of war crimes during the Gaza incursion, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. “The state of Israel will completely back anyone that acted in its name,” Olmert said Sunday at the beginning of the weekly Cabinet meeting. “The soldiers and commanders that were sent on missions in Gaza need to know that they are safe from different tribunals. Israel will assist them and protect them as they physically protected us during the operation in Gaza,” he said.
Even though they fought a defensive war, warned citizens of impending attacks, allowed in humanitarian aid, and risked their own lives to avoid killing enemy citizens.
But, Hamas can travel anywhere they want in Europe without fear without being arrested, even though they started the war, specifically targeted innocent civilians, and used their own as human shields. This is completely irrational.
Under the land of Israel you will find many tunnels filled with amazing historical artifacts. Under Gaza, you can find tunnels filled with weapons being stockpiled for use against the Jewish people, as part of an ongoing effort to completely annihilate them, to commit genocide.
Also know this :
January 22, 2009 – Washington, DC and Copenhagen, Denmark: A Dutch court yesterday ordered the criminal prosecution of Geert Wilders, Dutch parliamentarian and leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), for his statements – written, spoken and filmed -regarding Islam. The Amsterdam Court of Appeals has deemed such statements “insulting,” declaring that they “substantially harm the religious esteem” of Muslims. Clearly, the effect of this Dutch court order is to set new limits to public debate in Dutch society, in this case about the highly controversial but nonetheless crucially important subject of Islam. This makes the prosecution of Geert Wilders an unacceptable breach of the sanctity of freedom of speech in Western society.
A well known and well respected journalist friend from Paris,” indicates :
Concerning the situation in France in the high schools located in the Parisian suburbs, where the majority of the students are Muslim. it is impossible for an individual, whether a student or a teacher, to say that you are a Jew. If you say so, you’ll end in a hospital. Don’t show any hostility to Al-Qaeda, or Hamas, you’ll be exposed to the same kind of violence. You can also talk to some of these kids, they’re open to discussion. Many of them dream to become a martyr and blow up themselves. It’s after all understandable, that’s what they hear in their mosque. Two weeks ago the demonstrators stopped Place de l’Opera, shouted Allah is great and prayed [to] Allah. This is a fact, not bad science-fiction. People known to be close to revisionists groups and, mainly, ordinary people, from North Africa who suddenly claim that Allah, Hamas and the destruction of Israel matter more than their French citizenship. People don’t understand the danger our country is facing with a growing minority who believe that the law of the French republic matters less than the Islamic law. It is a problem, a huge one.
We can see from what is shown above the world is not going through one of its more rational periods of history. It would not be surprising if in the course of trying to be Mr. Nice Guy to the rest of the world, the American government, along with other Western governments, reaches out to Hamas and legitimizes it. We are certainly not living in an age of enlightenment, no matter how sophisticated our technology has become. In fact, this makes the technology very dangerous for there is little worse or more dangerous than Terrorists playing with
sophisticated tools of death. They find all kinds of nasty ways to use them to their advantage, and someone else usually pays the price for that.
We can return things into a state of Balance correcting our errors, or Natural law will bring alignment and balance to the universe by the force of God’s will itself. This restoration of balance comes quickly and unexpected. Like a storm a earthquake or like the ice breaking under your feet God forbid. Like a thief in the night. All that stands in the way of balance and that caused the imbalance will be immediately removed. Nature hates imbalance in the world surrounding us and the world inside us. The Earth was not created by human beings. The earth shall not be destroyed by them. The Earth will cleanse herself.
It is a abomination in the eyes of God for a human being to act stupidly. Not even the animals act with the stupidity. Animals follow nature. We humans are supposed to as well. We human beings come from a Divine origin, so too does our planet. We are endowed with a Divine mission. We can create and make things better, but there is a limit to what we can destroy and how much worse we can make things to be. By ignoring nature and acting “stupidly” we inadvertently transform ourselves into agents of evil. One cannot become an agent of evil and expect good to result. Such is madness delusion and self deception.
Let no one be so deceived to believe that there is no pay back and that injustice continues forever. Look back into history at the mighty nations and empires that have arisen and fallen. Their only remnants are relics in museums and information on pages in history books. The Divine order spoke, nature itself has directed the course of human events. When a nation rose to the heights and then in arrogance it’s leaders became drunk with power. Then it grew fat and became lazy. Soon, its replacement arose. It become unable to sustain itself. This has been the history of humanity.
Let us all do the right thing. Now
