Well since I'm on a roll today and in the spirit of the Royal Navy that once ruled the seas . . . .
What's that saying? Those who fail to learn from history repeat it . . .
Is Osama bin Laden simply a Barbary pirate in a long running conflict?
Jefferson's Koran
Thomas Jefferson once questioned Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain about the continuing piracy of the United States ships to which he told the future President that it was their duty as good Muslims to take the war to the unbeliever:
Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.
These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, "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."
The first Barbary War lasted from 1801 to 1805. For US Marines the Battle of Derna is memorialized in the Marine Hymn—"to the shores of Tripoli".
The Belmont Club helps us revisit the Philipines of the previous centuries and how those less politically correct were able to pacify an Islamic insurgency.
The Islamic Insurgency in the Philippines Part 1
Friday, January 05, 2007
The story of the Islamic insurgency in the Philippines is the story of the gradual and partial reversion of Philippine territory, originally incorporated by the American wars against the Moros in the early 20th century, to its former state. Prior to the US pacification campaign against the Moros between 1899 and 1913 the Sultanates of Sulu, Maguindanao and Buayan -- Muslim Mindanao -- were effectively independent from Spain. Although the Spaniards nominally claimed the entire extent of what is now called Palawan, Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, they did not exert effective control over it, anc could not have bequeathed it to a successor Filipino state. It was the Americans who accomplished that. . . .
. . . Unlike American policymakers a hundred years later, the US colonial authorities had no intention of bringing self-rule or democracy to the Moros. With abundant models of European colonialism available for emulation, their goals were simple: divide and rule while standing off. Ironically this traditional colonial approach would come to be called "realism" in the early 21st century.. . .
. . . The word was predatory. When the Spaniards arrived they found that the Visayan and Luzon coasts had long been harvested by Muslim pirates for slaves. . . .
. . . If the Philippines was the precursor to Iraq, Mindanao was the precursor the Darfur. The US acted to stop the pirates and the match was lit. . . .
. . . From a quiet beginning, an insurgency began to take shape. It included ambushes, raids and worst of all, suicide attacks. . . .
. . . The most unnerving form of Moro resistance was the juramentado, or suicide attack. A juramentado attacker would seek to reach paradise by slaying as many nonbelievers as possible before being killed himself.
But in an era that was far less politically correct, Leonard Wood's response to the Moro attacks was simply to call and raise. He smashed everyone who resisted and rewarded everyone who submitted. US forces "killed hundreds of Moros and burned their houses and crops. ... He and other officers expressed satisfaction with the results of these devastating campaigns. As a result of punishing one group of Moros, other groups that had been 'lukewarm and hostile' were inclined to submit to the Americans. Wood’s campaign effectively ended large-scale resistance by the Moros on Mindanao." A pacification campaign that began with "softly, softly" in the best British traditions; that emphasized "benevolent assimilation"; that gave the Moros local control became in the end a purely military operation of unrelenting savagery. Now on the run, the remaining Datus gathered their brave but desperate remnants at Bud Dajo volcano on the Island of Sulu. To Wood it simply made a lucrative target. At a cost of 15 KIA, he smashed them, killing 600 Moros, many of them women and children.
The ferocity of Army operations began to arouse opposition in the civil administration. Wood was replaced by Brigadier General Tasker Bliss who decided the policies of his predecessor had gone too far. . . .
. . . To make the government’s presence more visible, Pershing divided his forces into smaller units and distributed them around the province." (Doesn't this sound like the "surge" security strategy for Iraq?) . . .
So the more things change the more they stay the same. The trap the current Western world has fallen into is that they expect the nice warm and cozy social welfare world to last forever.
