Justplainbill's Weblog

An interesting read.

Here is a little history. Including how the term ‘Leatherneck’ came to be . .

Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago,
the United States had declared war on Islam, and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!
At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim pirates were the terror
of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic. They
attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant
ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment
and wrote heart breaking letters home, begging their government and
family members to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors
demanded.

These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis,
Morocco, and Algiers – collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast –
and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American
Republic.

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had
been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared
its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States
were protected by France. However, once the war was won, America had to
protect its own fleets. Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy.
Beginning in1784, seventeen years before he would become president, Thomas
Jefferson became America’s Minister to France. That same year, the
U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in
the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States,
rather than engaging them in war.

In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships,
and the Dey of Algiers demanded an unheard-of
ransom of $60,000. It was a plain and simple case of extortion,
and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further
payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a
coalition of allied nations who together could force the Islamic states
into peace. A disinterested Congress decided to pay the
ransom.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain
to ask by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved
American citizens, and why Muslims held so much hostility towards
America, a nation with which they had no previous
contacts.

The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had
answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it
was written in their Quran, 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.”
Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations,
as well as the objections of many notable American leaders, including
George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only
further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years, the American
government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American
ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to
over twenty percent of the United States government annual revenues in
1800.

Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being
sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the Pasha
of Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000
plus $25,000 a year for every year forthcoming. That changed
everything.

Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms,
what he could do with his demand. The Pasha responded by cutting
down the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the
United States.
Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers immediately followed suit.
Jefferson, until now, had been against America raising a
naval force for anything beyond coastal defense, but having watched his
nation be cowed by Islamic thuggery for long enough, decided that it was
finally time to meet force with force.

He dispatched a squadron
of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim nations of the
Barbary Coast a lesson he hoped they would never forget. Congress
authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and
goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to “cause to be done all other acts of
precaution or hostility as the state of war would justify”.

When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American cowardice and
acquiescence, saw the newly independent United States had both the will
and the might to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to
Tripoli.
The war with Tripoli lasted for four more
years, and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Marine
Corps in these wars led to the line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the
Marine Hymn, They would forever be known as “leathernecks” for the
leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from
being cut off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy
ships.

Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified
doing in the name of their prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson
quite deeply. America had a tradition of religious tolerance, the
fact that Jefferson, himself, had co-authored the Virginia Statute for
Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion
the world had ever seen. A religion based on supremacism, whose
holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers
was unacceptable to him. His greatest fear was that someday this
brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to the
United States.
This should bother every American. That the Islams
have brought about women-only classes and swimming times at
taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; that Christians, Jews,
and Hindus have been banned from serving on juries where Muslim
defendants are being judged, Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers
have been banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist
sensibilities. Ice cream has been discontinued at certain Burger
King locations because the picture on the wrapper looks similar to the
Arabic script for Allah, public schools are pulling pork from
their menus, on and on in the news papers….

It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it,
and most Americans have no idea that this battle is being waged every day across
America. By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate
what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to
our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a
politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda.
Sadly, it appears that today’s America would rather be politically
correct than victorious.

Any doubts, just Google Thomas Jefferson vs the Muslim World

Happy Remembering!