Pirates, Words and Women

Hat Tip to Letters In Bottles for picking up on the NRO article about the Barbary Pirates. I recall reading the historical comparison between 18th Century piracy and 21st Century terrorism in articles that followed 9/11, and it is good to review our history again.

America's Earliest Terrorists: The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib (“Land of Sunset”), denoting Islam’s territorial holdings west of Egypt. … The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America’s struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.

Although there is much in the history of America’s wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current “war on terror,” one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.

I agree with those commentators that are persistently making the point that western civilization needs to believe that devoutly religious Islamic leaders mean exactly what their words express. Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse raises his concern that a secular West is choosing not to give credibility to the actual message from Iran.

Iran's Main Mad Mullah: "We can Win Nuke War With Israel": But you cannot convince me that we should not be taking the Iranians at their word when their President threatens to “wipe Israel off the map” followed a few short weeks later by their Head of State saying that Iran could win a nuclear war with the Jewish state. How can we afford not to believe the evidence of our own ears?

As the old saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures, which is all the more reason to pay serious attention to the aggressive messages coming from Iran. An Economist article from 2002 makes the case that the mix of wealth and ignorance in the Arab world should be a concern to everyone and I recommend reading the entire story.

Self-doomed to Failure: The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources, concludes the report, but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower. Not having enough of these amounts to what the authors call the region's three “deficits”. It is these deficits, they argue, that hold the frustrated Arabs back from reaching their potential—and allow the rest of the world both to despise and to fear a deadly combination of wealth and backwardness.

Freedom, knowledge and woman power. If you skip the MSM and read the stories of our people in Iraq and Afghanistan, these are exactly the priorities Americans are working to develop within these societies.