Yesterday I heard someone ask if the pirates who had been holding an American captain hostage “dressed like pirates.”
When Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean became such a huge, surprise hit, I was a little worried that we were making cultural icons out of people who were essentially rapists, murderers, and torturers. Disney even tried to overcompensate for its glorification of the pirates-as-fun-loving-hedonists angle with its excremental sequels (at least the first part of the trilogy was a decent popcorn swashbuckler) by pouring on a pirates-are-honor-bound-oath-abiding-misfits scheme. (And, of course, British military officers were the bad guys.)
Recent events are making us aware that not only are there still pirates, but that they’re–gasp!–unsavory characters after all, less about partying and cracking jokes and a little more about trapping and threatening innocent people so they can sponge off their money.
So if this whole piracy thing doesn’t pan out, they can always get jobs in the Obama administration.
Anyway, as I followed this story over the weekend, I thought about the parallel with an earlier encounter between the United States and African pirates: the First Barbary War. In short, the infant U.S. was facing the well established practice of being extorted by African pirates (another manifestation of Islamicist terrorism), to the tune of a huge chunk of our tiny gross domestic product. John Adams was pragmatically conciliatory, but as soon as the Navy was strong enough and Thomas Jefferson came into office, the artistic, agnostic, philosopher president responded by saying, in essense, “Um, no, we aren’t going to pay this extortion. In fact, what I think we’ll do is invade your country, kill all of you, and put in a new leader.”
Which is exactly what he did. Thus, America’s first of many successful experiences with invasion and regime change. As James Madison put it at the time: “It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.”
It seems that each generation faces this test, and must keep learning that appeasement never works. Bullies only understand assertion, and so we must always respond.
And three cheers for the Navy SEALS and their commanders who did such an excellent job!
Gently Hew Stone 