For those who know no more about the Barbary pirates than the movies and stories of Barbarrosa, there were between one and 1.25 million Europeans captured and sold into slavery by the Muslim Barbary pirates from the 16th to 18th centuries. My point is that Muslim “terrorists” have been after non-Muslims for a long time.
The current attacks by ISIS and similar Muslim radicals in the Mideast have not been focused on non-Muslims, notwithstanding the beheading incidents of late, but have been intramural attacks on fellow Muslims. Yet the U.S. has felt compelled to take the strong lead in international reaction to the modern terrorists. Meanwhile the Muslim countries surrounding Syria and Iraq, as well as the nearby European powers, are providing light support, to say the most, to the latest American-led initiatives.
I fail to understand why the U.S. feels so compelled to take the strong lead, when it is the regional Muslim countries that are, or seemingly should be, so threatened by the Syrian Muslim extremists. Even more so, considering that it is the U.S. that has sold modern arms and trained the military of so many neighboring Muslim countries. This is not the age of the Barbary pirates, when a million or more Europeans, and some American warships, were directly impacted by Muslim extremists, yet by the actions being led by America, you would think it still is.
While U.S. airstrikes may or may not have the desired negative impact on ISIS, one thing is sure: the collateral damage among neutral civilians we are now inflicting, will assure another generation or two of America-hating among the families of those innocents effected. If you lived, for example, in some American small town, and an overseas nation bombed your community because they said some bad guys were hiding there, how might you feel toward that foreign nation? While collateral damage is inevitable in air strikes, the point is that the U.S. is courting repercussions that will last for generations ahead by not deferring to the Muslim nations in countering the extremists there. The unwillingness of fellow Muslims in not reacting more forcefully against ISIS suggests we are either misinterpreting the situation in the Middle East, or we are being sucker-punched not just by ISIS, but by all the Muslim countries surrounding Syria.
In my view it is the U.S. that should be in the supporting role in countering ISIS, with the surrounding Muslim countries in the lead, NOT the other way around! While Washington stretches to tell us that there is some support for our initiatives from other Mideast Muslim countries, while we lead the attack with missiles from our warships and American bombers, and have sent nearly two thousand soldiers back into Iraq (so far), we are not hearing the truth about how and why ISIS is not being seen as an imminent threat by Middle Eastern countries. It is time for the truth to be heard.
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September 25, 2014 at 02:04
John Beddall
Chuck, I take no issue with your sincere opinion about the current conflict but hasten to write to explain a popular misconception. Barbary Pirates took their name from the pre-Arab indigenous people from the west of the Nile, The Berbers. The name predates Muhammed by many centuries and has nothing to do with Barbarossa who will have been descended from the Seljuk Turks (Tartars from Central Asia 1000-1300AD approx.)
In 2,000 years before the birth of Christ, Berber (Amazigh) languages spread westward from the Nile valley across the northern Sahara into the Maghrib. The Greeks and Romans influenced Berber kingdoms such as Carthaginian, Mauretania and Numidia which were incorporated into the Roman Empire towards the end of second century BC.
The revelations to Muhammed and the writing of The Quran do not date until the early 6th century AD.
The Turkish Admiral Heyrettin, known to the West as Barbarossa (literally ‘The Red Beard’) served Sulieman the Magnificent in the first half of the 16th C and followed the (totally-unrelated) Berbers by many centuries.
 Sadly, some Internet contributors (not yourself, Chuck!) choose to create lurid foul-mouthed stories from their own imagination.
One such, ‘The Seven Most Terrifying Pirates in History’ confects a tale about Barbarossa “picking the wrong Sultan and then who went off to found his own country.” (Presumably, he means The Barbary Coast…?)
If you can bear to read it, there’s a similar display of ignorance and obscenity about the same man entitled “Badass of the Week” full of shoot-em-up violence which has attracted over a million and a half readers. Does anyone learn history today? Or more worryingly, do such pieces influence popular opinion?