Back to the shores of Tripoli
Until 1801, the United States and Great Britain paid yearly tribute to the Barbary States of North Africa (now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) for free passage of their merchant ships. Not that this prevented African pirates from plundering all the American and British ships that they could lay their hands on. Their actions eventually led to the first US military action overseas, the Battle of Derne in 1805. Many of the brigands were killed and the American prisoners in their captivity were freed. The opening line of the US Marine's Hymn refers to this action: "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli".
Talking of songs, such was the extent of Barbary piracy that Charles Dibdin, writer of lyrics for the Royal Navy, was kept busy penning ballads on the subject. One of his works, "The coast of High Barbary", celebrates the battle between two British ships, the Prince of Wales and the Prince Rupert, with one of the pirates: "I am not a man of war or privateer," said he / "But I'm a salt sea pirate a-lookin' for my fee." / For broadside, for broadside a long time we lay / Until the Prince Rupert shot the pirate's mast away." And then what happened? "For quarter, for quarter those pirates then did cry.../ But the answer that we gave them, we sunk them in their sea." Jolly Roger!
All of this is quaint history, of course, but today's news headlines give one a sense of the déjà vu. What are we to make of it all? Luckily for us, between Gavin and Jonah Goldberg on the Rainy Day blogroll, we've got Global Guerrillas, an excellent blog on "Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence," written by John Robb. The terrifying thing about the current wave of piracy, as Robb has pointed out, is that many of the robbers see themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods. "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard." A quote there from a New York Times interview with the Somali pirate, Sugule Ali, via satellite phone from deck of a seized Ukranian merchant ship carrying heavy weapons. Imagine the consequences if this "coast guard" were to commandeer a shipload of heavy weapons and sail it, say, over to Hizbollah? Question: Why is the West unwilling to follow and sink the Somali pirates? We have the means. What's happened to the will? Charles Dibdin would have nothing to write about today, alas.
