By 1800, 20 percent of federal expenditures were payments to North African pashas, according to historian Michael Oren. Only Thomas Jefferson assuming the presidency in 1801 led to a change in policy. He sensed that our spirit was better suited to “raise ships and men to fight the pirates into reason than money to bribe them.” Not that doing so was ever easy. In 1803, 15 Marines from the U.S.S. Philadelphia were ambushed and slain in Tripoli — the first U.S. servicemen to die on foreign soil — and 308 crewmen were taken prisoner after the ship foundered on a reef. (The “shores of Tripoli” line in the Marine hymn immortalizes not that military fiasco but an 1805 victory).
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 00:31:28 +0000