America in the Mideast, two centuries ago

The famous first line of the United States Marines’ Hymn -- "From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli" -- for all its familiarity, invokes some obscure history. "Halls of Montezuma" is a poetic rendering of Chapultepec Castle, iconic battle site of the Mexican-American War, and "shores of Tripoli" alludes to an even more estranged past. "Tripoli" is a bygone name for Libya, and was the scene of the first foreign war of the United States, over two centuries ago.

The First Barbary War must have seemed a quaint episode for most of the intervening 202 years. But today, five-and-a-half years deep in a major Mideastern intervention, the story has new relevance.

No longer under the protective Union Jack, American ships were not covered by British tribute to the Barbary states.

Those were Morocco and the Ottoman provinces of the North African coast: Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, or approximately current-day Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. A large part of the Barbary economies consisted of threatening and attacking shipping, taking hostages and slaves, and collecting ransom and tribute for peaceful passage through the Mediterranean. The racket was enforced by Barbary pirates or "corsairs", who operated officially on behalf of their governments.

This was seen by many Americans -- particularly the new president in 1801, Thomas Jefferson -- as an intolerable injustice, but the Congress dutifully allocated millions for Barbary tribute and ransom: 20 percent of the federal budget in 1800 alone. Then, in 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli of Tripoli demanded an outrageous increase in America's Tripolitan tribute. That tore it. The United States refused to pay Tripoli at all, and Tripoli declared war.

It was for just such a state of affairs that President Jefferson had dispatched a naval contingent to the Mediterranean, which proceeded to blockade the city of Tripoli and escort American shipping through Tripolitan waters.

The other Barbary states had seconded Tripoli's declaration of war, but Algiers and Tunis thought better of that following the show of strength and resolve, and some "gunboat diplomacy" in Tangier harbour persuaded Morocco to sit out the war.

The Americans defeated a Tripolitan corsair; the Tripolitans captured an American frigate with its 300 crewmen; the Americans launched five bombardments plus a failed fireship attack against Tripoli; and the war settled into a stalemate.

After nearly four years without resolution, American tactics were radically revamped. William Eaton had a plan.

Eaton had been U.S. Consul to Tunis, and was uncannily like Lawrence of Arabia over a century later: fluent in Arabic, a maverick, and wont to "go native", adopting the Arab dress.

Eaton advocated "regime change", in contemporary parlance, though of the pre-1945 sort, replacing a hostile strongman with a more agreeable one. A pretender to the throne was found -- the pasha's brother, Hamet -- and an assortment of Marines and mostly-Muslim mercenaries totaling about 500 started the 500 mile march from Egypt to Derna in Tripoli.

There, Eaton's men were outnumbered 10 to 1, but the U.S. Navy controlled the harbor, and after a coordinated naval bombardment and overland charge, Eaton captured the city, albeit with a musket-shot to the wrist.

The campaign halted awaiting supplies and reinforcements for the push to the capitol. But the support never arrived. Instead, Eaton received orders to withdraw. Eaton's expedition had given the United States new diplomatic leverage, and the pasha had negotiated. The American prisoners would be released, the U.S. government would pay $60,000 but no further tribute, American shipping would be free from Tripolitan piracy, and the pasha would remain securely on his throne.

The other Barbary states followed suit. But regardless of any pesky diplomatic commitments, Algerian corsairs resumed their attacks on American shipping only two years later, and Barbary piracy resumed generally once America became preoccupied with war much closer to home by 1812. In 1815, the United States was back at war along the Barbary coast, and this time, the fix would be permanent.

202 years of dizzying change notwithstanding, there are some striking parallels with today.

As early as 1785, then-diplomat Thomas Jefferson had tried to cobble an international coalition to confront Barbary piracy, and if America is hard-put for allies today, it found exactly none two centuries ago.

Contrary to the isolationist argument against today’s Mideastern intervention – that the United States was founded to be an isolationist republic, free of "foreign entanglements", in George Washington’s phrase – America has been here before. Thomas Jefferson himself was an interventionist, and on the Mideast, no less.

The war followed a newly-familiar pattern: early success, stalemate, tactical revolution, then aborting the mission in favor of a partial solution.

Tripoli does demonstrate that, faced with several years of stalemate, the United States can overhaul its tactics and break through; but the next step of abandoning the project absent a final resolution, if also repeated in Iraq, may also mean returning to fight another day.

Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia

Published in The Chronicle -Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia