Terrorism, Thomas Jefferson, and Barbary Pirates
America’s 200-Year-War with Islam
The Boston bombings, the Fort Hood shootings, the events of 9/11, and numerous international Islamic terrorist activities are only new to people who have no sense of history.
Most Americans are familiar with the first line of the United States Marine Corps hymn, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” but most likely don’t know the source of the “Tripoli” reference. The line “to the shores of Tripoli” refers to the First Barbary War, specifically the Battle of Derna, that took place in 1805.
Our earliest founders were familiar with the terrorist ways of radical Islamists. Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as the ambassador to France, and John Adams, the Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Ambassador Abdrahaman, the Dey of Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty. Peace for an Islamist means surrender to Islam.
Peace would come at a price. If America wanted “temporary peace,” a one-year guarantee, it would cost $66,000 plus a 10% commission. “Everlasting peace” was a bargain at $160,000 plus the obligatory commission. This only applied to Tripoli. Other Muslim nations would also have to be paid. The amount came to $1.3 million. But there was no assurance that the treaties would be honored. In vain, Jefferson and Adams tried to argue that America was not at war with Tripoli. In what way had the U.S provoked the Muslims, they asked? Ambassador Abdrahaman went on to explain “the finer points of Islamic jihad” to the Koranically challenged Jefferson and Adams. In a letter to John Jay, Jefferson wrote the following:
“The Ambassador answered us 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 [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Abdrahaman was paraphrasing the Koran’s “rules of engagement” found in the 47 Surah: “Whenever you encounter the ones who disbelieve [during wartime], seize them by their necks until once you have subdued them, then tie them up as prisoners, either in order to release them later on, or also to ask for ransom, until war lays down her burdens.”
Unless a nation submits to Islam — whether it was the aggressor or not — that nation was by definition at war with Islam. Jihad means “to submit.” A non-aggressing nation is still at war with Islam as long as it hasn’t embraced Islam. Islam’s goal is to conquer the world, either by the submission of one’s will or by Allah’s sword.
Paul Johnson writes:
“Koranic teaching that the faith or ‘submission’ can be, and in suitable circumstances must be, imposed by force, has never been ignored. On the contrary, the history of Islam from Arabia was followed by the rapid conquest of North Africa, the invasion and virtual conquest of Spain, and a thrust into France that carried the crescent to the gates of Paris. It took half a millennium or reconquest to expel the Moslems from Western Europe. The Crusades, far from being an outrageous prototype of Western imperialism, as is taught in most of our schools, were a mere episode in a struggle that has lasted 1,400 years and were one of the few occasions when Christians took the offensive to regain the “occupied territories” of the Holy Land.”
When President Jefferson refused to increase the tribute demanded by the Islamists, Tripoli declared war on the United States. A United States navy squadron, under Commander Edward Preble, blockaded Tripoli from 1803 to 1805. After rebel soldiers from Tripoli, led by United States Marines, captured the city of Derna, the Pasha of Tripoli signed a treaty promising to exact no more tribute.
President Obama is not the first person who has tried to whitewash Islam’s history and sell us on the peaceful motives of Muslims. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim, took his constitutional oath on Jefferson’s copy of the Koran. How ironic given Jefferson’s disdain for Islam’s double dealings.
Jefferson, embroiled in a war with Islamic terrorists in his day, commented, “Too long, for the honor of nations, have those Barbarians been suffered [permitted] to trample on the sacred faith of treaties, on the rights and laws of human nature!” Little has changed since Jefferson’s day.
What the Left and Sharia Law have in Common
You know, minus the terrorism. Let’s look at the similarities. For the kind of Islamists we’re talking about, the Sharia Islamists, there is no authority but Islam. To the left, there is no authority but themselves. They respect and recognize no other authority. They don’t recognize the authority of elections. They don’t recognize the authority of public opinion. They don’t recognize the authority of the Constitution, even though they all swear an oath. Why do you think we require everybody in government to swear an oath to the Constitution?
‘Cause that’s glue, folks. That’s the glue that keeps everything together. The reason all of these oaths of office and oaths of naturalization require pledging fidelity to the Constitution is that that is supposed to be the compact that unites all of us. Winning or losing, we are united as Americans, defined by our Constitution. Swearing the oath announces the understandings based on which we become “we, the people.” If you have a huge movement in the country that’s not just rejecting but actively undermining the Constitution, then it becomes a real question.
And once that group becomes big enough — a majority of the population — then it becomes questionable whether we even have a “we, the people” anymore. And this behavior is very, very close to Sharia Islam. There is no authority but Islam. It’s a core tenet: The ruler must be obeyed as long as he complies and enforces Sharia. And if the rural abandons Sharia, they assassinate him like in the case of Anwar Sadat or Mubarak. Now, they don’t do assassinations here, but if the left’s leader abandons them, you know what happens to them.
They’re immediately forgotten, destroyed, cast aside, and ruined. But here, let me try it a different way. If Islamists are in the role of Democrats in my analogy, Americans assume the role of the GOP. We proclaim that our commitment to tolerance means that we have to make room at the table even for Islamists and people we disagree with. Notwithstanding that they deny our right to govern ourselves under our own principles. In other words, you’ve heard people say, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
RUSH: My point is to the left, the Democrat Party, the media — however you want to describe ’em — everything but what they believe and everything but who they believe is illegitimate. There is no crossing the aisle. There is no compromise. There is no working together to prove Washington or government works. There is only one way. When they are in power, they pretend it’s because their beliefs are a popular mandate. But that is disproven every time they lose. Their views cannot be the result of a popular mandate; otherwise, they would never lose elections. When they lose elections — when they’re not in power — their beliefs dictate that everything else must be delegitimized, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing today. Everything about this Russian collusion and everything about Susan Rice and all of these investigations and the leaking, it’s all about delegitimizing the duly elected, constitutionally legal president and Congress. It’s about delegitimizing that. It’s not about working with them. It’s not about them having a head case and not understanding yet that they lost. It’s not about that they’re gonna come to their senses down the road.
There is always a pretense that they represent the popular mandate, when they very rarely really do.