On the recordMarch 3, 2011
With the cold-blooded murder of four Americans by pirates, our country faces a dangerous enemy as old as the second Washington administration and the earliest days of the U.S. Navy. This danger now stretches across our vital oil supply lanes and threatens not just Americans handing out Bibles at Indian Ocean ports of call but our vital supply of energy. I think it is time to recall the tough choices made by the Jefferson administration to suppress the 21st century's pirates in this new chapter. We may forget that as much as 10 percent of all Federal revenues were paid by the Washington administration to the Barbary pirates operating in what became Libya. Payments continued under the Adams and Jefferson administrations, but as always with kidnappers and pirates, ransoms only led to more danger on the high seas. In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson decided that payments of tribute to the Barbary States in exchange for the safe passage of American shipping vessels had gone far enough. Over the next 5 years, Jefferson sent the new U.S. Navy--ironically built over his objection--to attack and defeat the pirates. In the conflict that followed, new American heroes were made, especially Captain Stephen Decatur.
