Michael Oren is the Israeli historian and author of Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (2007), among other excellent books. In the first chapter of Power, Faith and Fantasy he tells the story of our submission to, our subsequent struggle against, and our final victory over the Barbary pirates. Turning to that chapter this morning, I see how much of it I have forgotten. It is intensely interesting and timely.
Oren retells a sliver of the story in the Fox News column “Our Founders fought a Middle East war centuries ago. We could learn a lot from them.” Oren concludes:
These testaments [of our victory over the Barbary pirates] serve to remind Americans, now approaching their country’s 250th birthday, of the ways in which the Founders faced the threats to free navigation posed by an extremist Middle Eastern regime. Though initially divided over whether to financially incentivize or militarily vanquish that power, the country’s first leaders decided on the latter course and prevailed.
The Trump administration, by contrast, has pursued both policies, first waging war against Iran and now inducing it with the possible infusion of billions. Still unknown is whether Iran – unlike Barbary – can be trusted to comply with the agreement and whether the peace once won by the United States can be replicated today.
Among the heroes of the story are George Washington, who signed the Naval Act of 1794, Thomas Jefferson, who advocated for a navy and a credible military force against the Barbary pirates and ordered war, James Madison, who sought approval for the war against Algiers (the second Barbary War), and Commodore Stephen Decatur, who commanded the U.S. Navy Mediterranean squadron and secured the final treaty of peace with the Barbary Powers. Oren reminds us: “No less than 17 American cities were named for the hero of that campaign,” i.e., Decatur.
Oren’s book is particularly good in integrating the history of our struggle against the pirates with the history of our founding era. Here is one example (pages 31-32, footnote omitted):
Publications like The Federalist Papers and The Algerine Spy helped tip the balance in the Federalists’ favor. The Constitution, officially adopted on March 4, 1789, empowered Congress to declare war and “to provide and maintain a navy.” A threat from the Middle East had played a concrete role in creating a truly United States, a consolidated nation capable of defending its borders at home but its vital economic interests overseas. “In an indirect sense, the brutal Dey of Algiers was a Founding Father of the Constitution,” the historian of American diplomacy Thomas Bailey wrote.
And yet:
Whether Americans would actually use their newly forged federal powers to fight was still questionable. A vocal portion of the public continued to object to the notion of a large standing navy and recoiled from engaging in foreign conflicts. Many were reluctant to take up arms under almost any circumstances, preferring the “Innocence and the Olive branch” approach to Barbary to an “erect and independent attitude.”
As for The Algerine War, Oren had earlier discussed author Peter Markoe, affectionately nicknamed “Peter the Poet,” one of Philadelphia’s leading bards:
At the outset of the ratification debate, in 1787, he had published The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania, a satirical piece of Federlist propaganda. Presenting himself as Mehmet, an Algerian agent sent to scout out America’s defenses, Markoe praised political and economic freedoms guaranteed by the United States, but then mocked its national cohesion. “Totally ruined by disunion and faction,” the states “may be plundered without the least risque, and their young men and maidens triumphantly carried into captivity.” To hasten America’s despoiling, Markoe had recommend seizing all of Rhode Island, the only state that boycotted the convention, and transforming it into a base for Algerian operations.
Markoe’s The Algerine Spy is still in print. The text is also posted online in digital form by the University of Michigan Library.
Writing his 2005 biography of Jefferson, Christoher Hitchens immersed himself in this history. Oren’s book arrived too late to help him with this part of Hitchens’s Jefferson biography, but he cited Oren’s book and took issue with one of his judgments in the brilliant City Journal essay “Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates” (2007).
