(Military Times) Op-Ed: Privatizing Piracy Protection

[unhappycamper]

Privatizing Piracy Protection
(convicted felon) Oliver North | November 28, 2008

Piracy has long been the consequence of disorder. America's first foreign war – undeclared but authorized by Congress – was waged by President Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates. It is instructive history for those who believe that the problem of Somali piracy can be solved the same way.

By the late 1700s the European powers were incapable of maintaining maritime "law and order" and Islamic piracy became a flourishing enterprise in the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast of North Africa. Despite "tribute" payments to the "governments" in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco, by the British, French and new American governments, merchant mariners were at risk of being taken hostage for ransom and their ships and cargoes sunk or stolen.

By the time of Jefferson's inaugural in 1801, American ransoms and "tributes" amounted to more than $1 million per year – nearly one fifth of the U.S. budget. Jefferson pledged to end the payments and dispatched – with Congressional approval – the nascent U.S. Navy to protect American-flagged merchant vessels and prosecute a naval campaign against the Pasha of Tripoli. It almost worked.

In February 1804 U.S. Navy Lieutenant Stephen Decatur succeeded in boarding and destroying a captured U.S. combatant – the USS Philadelphia and liberating surviving members of the ship's imprisoned crew. A year later, a small party of U.S. Marines and mercenaries led by U.S. Marine Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon conducted an intrepid overland expedition to assault Derna and force the surrender of the Tripolitan leader, Yussif Karamanli. The Mamaluke sword he surrendered to O'Bannon is memorialized to this day in the dress sword worn by Marine Officers and by the line, "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marines Hymn. It seemed like a glorious victory for American arms. But it wasn't.

Though Jefferson had pledged "not one cent in tribute," the treaty ending what came to be called "The first Barbary War," provided $60,000 in ransom for the three hundred "more or less" American citizens being held by the defeated government. Jefferson and Congress acquiesced because of the value he placed on American lives. It was a precedent that I came to know well.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,180083,00.html?wh=news

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. why would they put a criminal's words out in an op-ed?

he lied to congress under oath.
he lied to the American people
He & pointdexter shredded thousands of documents over a weekend, after they got a head's up that they would have to testify.
He broke numerous federal laws, both with selling arms to Iran in an effort to trade them for hostages and he funded the cromonal contras, against other federal laws. He conspired with Regan, Pointdexter, Secord, McFarlane, and William Casey. Luckily for Casey, he died of a brain tumor before he could testify against North. Even more lucky was McFarlane, who, in a fit of ethics never seen before in Reagan's administration, tried to commit suicide the night before his testimony. It succeeded in providing pity for McFarlane, while giving North a pass on his many premeditated crimes.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. oops. forgot Eliot Abrams, a true rsacal, coward and traitor.