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Modern day piracy has to stop Date published: 11/20/2009
IN 1783, the newly hatched USA Pragmatically, Congress opted to pay a bribe to the pirates and instructed the U.S. ambassadors to France and Great Britain (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams) to negotiate the terms. Explaining the motives of the pirates, Jefferson wrote back, "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." Today the piracy theater has shifted to East Africa, where Somali renegades are seizing ships and hostages and demanding ransom. The Somalis this year have taken at least 36 ships and hundreds of hostages, including a British couple on their sailboat. On Oct. 2, pirates seized a Basque tuna vessel with a crew of 34--including 18 Spaniards--in the Gulf of Aden. Now it's free--reportedly after a payment by the Spanish government of between $3.3 million and $4 million. "The government has done what it had to do," said the Spanish prime minister. But is paying off pirates wise? Just after America's deal with the sponsors of North African piracy, Jefferson told Congress that paying "tributes" would only beget more high-seas holdups. In any case, during the next 15 years, the U.S. paid the pirates $1 million a year in protection money. Then Jefferson became president. Soon after his 1801 inauguration, the Pasha of Tripoli demanded a tribute of more than $200,000. Instead, Jefferson sent a flotilla of frigates the next year, more. The ensuing battles tested the mettle of the U.S. military. Finally, a handful of Marines leading a group of mercenaries captured Tripoli, ending the First Barbary War. To crush the pirates, it took a Second Barbary War (1815). But the principle was proved that confronting pirates, not rewarding them, stopped their aggression. Spain disserved the world's maritime community with its payoff. It should have copied Barack Obama, Jeffersonian in his handling of scurvy buccaneers.
Spain's currency is the Euro, not the peseta. It's worth noting because the paying of tribute was a typical euro-weenie thing to do. I don't see B. Hussein Obama agreeing with Jefferson's interpretation of the Koran though.
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