Christopher Hitchens told the story of “Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates” in a 2007 City Journal essay. Hitchens cited several books on the subject including Michael Oren’s then just-published account in his magisterial Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.
Now comes historian Martin Kramer — Walter P. Stern Fellow at the Washington Institute and author of one of its most widely read monographs, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failures of Middle Eastern Studies in America. In an institute lecture earlier this week, Kramer asked how the man in the street might answer a question asking what the heck “the shores of Tripoli” are.
The question forms the preface to Kramer’s discussion of the varying approaches of America’s early leaders to our first encounters with the Middle East. Kramer hears echoes of today’s dilemmas. Referring to our struggles with the Barbary pirates, Oren titled the third chapter of his history “A Crucible of American Identity.” Kramer gives us “a very brief history lesson” on the crucicle in a lecture that is both witty and educational for those of us who need help remembering who the Barbary pirates were, let alone identifying “the shores of Tripoli.”
