Word: navale
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Within days of his March 1801 inauguration as the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson ordered a naval and military expedition to North Africa, without the authorization of Congress, to put down regimes involved in slavery and piracy. The war was the first in which the U.S. flag was carried and planted overseas; it saw the baptism by fire of the U.S. Marine Corps--whose anthem boasts of action on "the shores of Tripoli"--and it prefigured later struggles with both terrorism and jihad...
Jefferson was appalled by this practice from an early stage of his career. In 1784 he wrote to James Madison about the Barbary depredations, saying, "We ought to begin a naval power, if we mean to carry on our commerce. Can we begin it on a more honorable occasion or with a weaker foe?" He added that John Paul Jones, the naval hero of the Revolutionary War, "with half a dozen frigates" could subdue the slave kingdoms of North Africa...
Jefferson's recommendation was that the Administration refuse any payment of tribute and prepare at once to outfit a naval squadron to visit the Mediterranean in strength. Ultimately, he proposed, America should arrange for an international concert of powers composed of all those nations whose shipping and citizens were preyed upon. "Justice and Honor favor this course," he wrote, adding that it would also save money in the long...
...would Jefferson want to act as recruiter for a European monarch? First, because he wanted to keep Jones employed and give him the type of combat experience that would befit the potential chief naval commander of the United States. Second, because three of the four Barbary States--Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis--were part of the Turkish, or Ottoman, Empire. Britain, which rather encouraged the Barbary powers to attack American ships, used Turkey as a counterweight in its war against Catholic powers on mainland Europe. Why shouldn't the U.S. reply in kind by discreetly helping Russia make life hard...
...pictures had eerie and disturbing echoes: men in blindfolds squatting on the floor looking disoriented, then being forced to march over rocky ground. These were not images of Abu Ghraib, but videos of British servicemen, part of a naval training team, arrested by Iranian forces after straying into Iranian waters during a storm. The sailors quickly apologized on TV, and after four tense days they were released as moderates in Tehran apparently prevailed in an internal power struggle. But hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guards had seemed eager to goad London, suggesting the men were special forces. According to Sadegh...