Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence — the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we’re not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We’re facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers — and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

On the contrary: They target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory. (Applause.)

The stories we read in today’s headlines of Islamic terrorism against innocent civilians and slavery under Islamic regimes are nothing new. Just as the current Islamic regime in Sudan enslaves it’s southern Christians, and gives them the choice of “convert or die,” the Islamic armies that overran the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe gave their captives the simple choice of conversion, death, or slavery. Two hundred years ago American sailors sailing the Mediterranean faced the same choice when their unprotected ships were captured by the Islamic “Barbary Pirates” of North Africa.
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The Barbary Coast of Northern Africa consisted of the four states of Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis. The “Barbary Pirates” had for centuries captured vessels sailing the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They occasionally raided coastal villages to capture Christian slaves, such as a village in southern Ireland, which was said to have been entirely captured by Muslim raiders.

Earning their living by blackmail, tribute, piracy and slavery, the Barbary Pirates received yearly sums of money, ships, and arms from foreign powers. Those who payed their tribute were allowed to sail unmolested along the Barbary Coast, and trade in the African ports. Those who did not had their ships seized and their crews held for ransom or sold into slavery. In 1662, England agreed to pay an annual tribute, in return for free passage along the Barbary Coast.

Religion was a factor, just as it is now. The Barbary Pirates were Muslims. Those they preyed upon were exclusively Christians, and if not released through the payment of tribute, faced slavery or worse. Those few who converted to Islam escaped slavery, and were treated as equals. If any Christian dared to blaspheme Allah, he risked being impaled or roasted alive. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, serving at the time as European Ministers, asked the ambassador from Tripoli why his government sanctioned such savagery. He replied that the Koran stated that non-Muslims were “sinners,” and Muslims had a “…right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners.”
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The nation’s first Secretary State, Thomas Jefferson, told Congress it must choose “…between war, tribute and ransom.” He believed war was the only reasonable choice, and advocated the creation of a navy. Tribute paid to the pirates was “money thrown away,” and the only thing they truely understood was gunpowder and shot. Just as Luther 250 years earlier, Jefferson called for a united military alliance among the European powers, along with America, to blockade North Africa and provide for a military solution against the pirates. Europe chose to continue paying tribute.

“Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence,” said George Washington in 1786. Said one American envoy, “There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror.”
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It was 19th century colonialism that finally put an end to centuries of North African piracy, just as it was the Western nations that finally ended the Slave Trade.

Unfortunately the slave trade, taking of captives for ranson, and terrorism lives on Islamic societies.