February 17 - More Barbaracy

Pirates flew Jolly Rogers (though not the Barbary pirates). I knew there was a connection with Ginger Rogers there somewhere :-)

On the History Channel today, was a series of shows called "The Presidents". The first episode covered Washington (1789-1797) Adams (1797-1801), Jefferson (1801-1809) and Madison (1809-1817). For the lovers of pastries, Madison is, of course, the most important, or rather, his wife, anyway. This is, of course, the period of time covered in yesterday's post regarding the Barbary wars. The next president after Madison was Monroe, the fellow credited with the Monroe Doctrine, even though it was Adams who authored it. Anyway, the second in the series begins with Monroe and was certain to mention the doctrine. What is interesting is that not a single mention of the Barbary Wars, nor the doctrine that came out of them was mentioned in the first of the series.

The war of 1812 figures prominently in the first show of the series. It is the only war fought on American soil that the U.S. lost, but it is otherwise not very notable. One wonders why the Barbary wars that bracketed it were not mentioned because these wars, aside from establishing a doctrine that lives to this day, also 1) had the U.S. building a Navy suitable for fighting halfway around the world and 2) establishing itself for the first time as a significant military power in the world by virtue of that navy proving to be effective.

It also fails to mention that captured American merchant sailors were sold into slavery by the North Africans during that time and that was one of the major issues of the peace treaties signed at the cessation of hostilities, each time. This seems like an interesting fact that folks might want to know about. Of course, at the time, as we all know, the U.S. was still a slave nation. I suspect it is less well known that the taking of slaves was somewhat bi-lateral.

In a modern context, it is also interesting to note that what we had at the time was Muslim nations initiating unprovoked aggression against America, taking Americans for slaves, stealing American property, extorting America and breaking peace treaties with America. In the present, when we practice all kinds of moral relativism, might this be classified an inconvenient truth?

Dear reader, what explanation can you provide for neglecting these nuggets of knowledge?