0 Votes
RE: Piracy is not new
I have read both the Koran and the Bible. Yes, I am against anyone swearing on a Koran to uphold our nation, because a nation such as ours cannot exist in an Islamic world. It is a mutually exclusive situation and I believe our nation, my nation will be the loser.
As far as Jefferson, I am only saying that his possession of a Koran, did not mean that he ascribed to the doctrine it contained, nor that he would approve of it being used at a swearing in ceremony. And it also doesn’t mean that he didn’t.
The dates of the war are overall kind of irrelevant. We were paying tribute to Muslim nations long before the war. Jefferson just said no. I think it is interesting that so many don’t know about this undeclared war abroad against Muslim nations. And it was even more interesting when you throw in the Jefferson’s Koran thing.
Barbary Pirates by Bortnyk
It is a huge stretch to suggest that Jefferson was even remotely interested in getting into the mind of the enemy by reading the Koran. It is far more likely that he wasn’t even spending alot of time thinking about it.
After being sent back from failed negotiations with the Bey of Tripoli about paying tribute for enslaved US Navy Sailors, William Eaton sort of brow beat Jefferson into awarding him a commision as the US Naval agent to the Barbary States. With this commision came a clandestine mission to ‘take advantage of civil unrest’ in order to win a more favorable arrangement that did not involve tribute. Jefferson also dispatched Commodore James Barron to blockade the port, as well as the hapless diplomat Tobias Lear to negotiate a treaty that didn’t involve tribute.
During the execution portion of this operation, Commodore Barron had a limited amount of funds and forces to prosecute his blockade and Tobias Lear wandered the Mediteranean with his wife on vacation before even arriving in Tripoli. Eaton was sent across war torn Egypt/ Africa in search of Hamet Karamanli, the deposed ruler of Tripoli, with 8 marines, a small amount of money, and a fistful of correspondance. These are certainly not the wartime actions of a president so focused on a war that he read the Koran to gain insight into Yusef Bashaw. These are closer to the actions of a president who was interested in expanding the country, and building gunboats in favor of a strong navy.