Yes, I know, I am supposed to refer to them as "extremists," nothing more. But I am sorry, I call what I see, and what I see are Islamic Terrorists. I will concede that they are extremists, but nevertheless, they are extremists who are Islamic Terrorists.
America's involvement or war against Islamic Terrorists goes back many years, perhaps not as far back as European countries that fought in the Crusades and later against the Ottoman Empire, but nevertheless, we do have a history which began shortly after our country was founded. It all began when our merchant ships were being captured and robbed by Barbary Coast pirates off North Africa. These were pirates of various stripes, even some European free-lancers, but mostly of Islamic origin. Those that were state sponsored were all of Islamic origin, pirates from Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis - all of the countries and city states of North Africa along the Mediterranean coast.
On and off, most European countries waged war against these pirate states, but ultimately settled things by paying tribute! In other words, the European countries were black mailed by these countries. So, Europeans have had a history of caving-in to the demands of terrorists!
But Europeans were not alone, we too were paying tribute! It may sound unpalatable, but we paid the pirates to leave our ships alone. The biggest offender at the time was Algiers but we had struck a deal with the dey of Algiers and paid him tribute annually. But then we started having problems with the pasha of Tripoli who wanted to be paid like his counterpart in Algiers. In 1802 the pasha of Tripoli seized one of our merchant ships and held it for ransom, so we went to war against him. High sea piracy appears to be in the blood of some of the Islamic states, like IEDs or suicide bombing! Today we have the Somali pirates, a bit south of where all that piracy used to take place, but still on the same continent and still conducted by Islamic Terrorists!
We had a total of two "Barbary Wars" at the end of which we stopped paying tribute to any of those pirate state countries. All of this took place before the War of 1812! Francis Scott Keys, who wrote the lyrics to our National Anthem during the War of 1812 also penned some words about our "Barbary Wars" glorifying our victory. His lyrics, vastly modified, were incorporated later into the Marine Corps Hymn......."to the shores of Tripoli".....a bit out of sequence, since the lyrics begin with
"From the Halls of Montezuma"......referring to the Mexican war that took place in 1846, decades later! But never mind, it is a great hymn with great lyrics! Who said music lyrics had to be chronologically accurate!
That was the start of our wars with Islamic Terrorists. Although there was some relative quiet, no action, for some time, the whole thing erupted in the 20th Century and has continued into the 21st. We've had five Ambassadors and numerous other diplomats that were killed by the Islamic Terrorists just in the past half a century. Most members of the American public probably didn't pay all that much attention to these deaths, since there were a lot of other things going on at the same time. After all, something like the 9/11 or the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon certainly would overshadow an incident involving a U.S. diplomat who was killed in some far off land with an unpronounceable name. Again, the death of someone with a title of an Ambassador would gain more attention than somebody who is merely identified as a U.S. diplomat, or sometimes just as a U.S. employee of the Embassy or Consulate General! People tend to pay much more attention to something that involves someone that appears to be "important." But to the Foreign Service family, for those who chose to work abroad to represent our country, every death of a Foreign Service member is a very close and personal thing. The U.S. Foreign Service, despite periodic expansions, is a very small organization compared to other government agencies. At any given time, there are about 6,000 Foreign Service Officers with the State Department. Of course there are others who hold specialist positions such as Diplomatic Security, Communications, etc. But the FSOs, as the Foreign Service Officers are called, number in total only about 6,000.
I have known a number people during my Foreign Service career who were killed by terrorists. Some I knew casually, others I knew quite well. In 1983, a US Navy captain from JUSMAG (Joint United States Military Advisory Group) in Athens, George Tsantos, was gunned down by a Greek terrorist. This was not a killing by an Islamic Terrorist, but still it was a terror attack. I used to play poker with George as well as a group of others when I was in Athens, so I knew him well! But perhaps the death that hit home closest was the death of a young woman who was one of the casualties of the Nairobi bombing in 1998.
Michelle Denny was a young woman that both my wife Jo and I knew very well. In fact she was like a kid sister to Jo. Michelle was an Administrative Officer at the Consulate General in Guayaquil, Ecuador when we were there 1988-92. She got married in Ecuador to her long time boy friend who came out to Guayaquil and the wedding took place in our house. She left Ecuador and was assigned to Montevideo, Uruguay. When she finished her tour of duty in Montevideo, she contacted me and asked me to help her get a posting to Nairobi. This is a very common practice in the Foreign Service and many jobs are secured in this fashion. "Corridor Reputation" is extremely important, so having someone vouch for you is a good way to get a job.
At the time I knew the DCM (Deputy Chief of the Mission) in Nairobi quite well, so I called him and told him about Michelle. I told him what a great officer she was and how bright she was. My friend thanked me for the input and said that he would choose her for the job of General Services Officer at the embassy. So, Michelle got the job in Nairobi. When I heard in 1998 that she was killed in the bombing, it numbed me at first. I confess to even having a sense of guilt for having helped her get to Nairobi! Michelle died in that Al Qaeda bombing, leaving behind a husband and two daughters.
In September of 2012, in Benghazi, Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens, along with three other Americans, was killed by Al Qaeda sponsored attack on the Consulate. I knew Chris Stevens from Cairo, back in 1995-96. At the time, Chris was a second tour officer, having been in the Foreign Service about four years or so. He was a tall, good looking young man with an unruly mop of sandy hair, stereotypical image of a California surfer! In fact, Chris was from California and he was a surfer! Many a female employee in my section had a crush on him! Chris worked for me for about nine months before he left post for bigger and better things. He was bright, friendly, hard working, and spoke very good Arabic. He was everything you would want in a Foreign Service Officer. I left Cairo in 1997 for Tijuana, Mexico, but kept tabs on Chris. He moved up rapidly through the ranks and I was not surprised to hear that he was appointed ambassador to Libya in 2011.
Just as in the case of Michelle Denny earlier, it was a shock to hear of Chris's death announced on TV news......the same way I first heard about Michelle's death! They were two people that I knew very well, and their lives were cut short, cruelly and violently by Islamic Terrorists. They were killed not by "extremists" as suggested by Washington, but by Al Qaeda, the Islamic Terrorists.
John Quincy Adams was reluctant to go to war against the Barbary Pirates, the Islamic Terrorist of that period. He said that if we went to war against them (Islamic Terrorists), we would be fighting them for a long, long time! How prophetic! Adams wasn't keen on paying the pirates, but he didn't want to go to war either. It was problematic, a difficult choice, which was fortunately left up to Jefferson to make, and he chose to go to war.
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