More than two hundred years before America's famed war on terrorism, Thomas Jefferson was fighting terrorism. Ironically, the threat our nation faced at that time was from the same enemy we fight today: Islamists.
In 1784, seventeen years before he was elected president of the United States of America, Jefferson left for Paris to become America's Minister to France. That same year, the United States Cogress tried to appease her Muslim enemies by copying the European nations who paid tributes to the Barbary States, rather than engaging them in war.
Jefferson maintained that bribes ween't the answer. Congress ignored him. Then, in July of 1785, Algerian pirates took two American ships captive and the Dey of Algiers demanded a ransom of nearly $60,000. Jefferson opposed any more ransom payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a colalition of allied nations who could, if they worked together, force the Muslim states into peace. (Does any of this sound familiar?)
Even then, Jefferson recognized the threat radical Islam posed to our freedoms and way of life.
The threat to our freedom comes under the guise of many names. I truly believe history is a continueous loop, modified only to give it a contemporary air.
ReplyDeleteSilly us. We try to teach our children to learn from their mistakes...
We do ourselves and our children a disservice when we soften history so as to not offend anyone today. For instance, I have no problem telling our children that we dropped an atomic bomb on Japan not once, but twice during WWII. Japanese students should know that, too. While we talk about concentration camps in Germany and Japan, we should also talk about the camps that existed here in the US. We should discuss the differences and similarities. We should learn.
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