Tue 24 May 2005
I am resigning my membership in the Libertarian Party, along with my positions on the LNC and Georgia Executive Committee, effective immediately. After my experiences dealing with the membership, and much of the leadership, of this organization I no longer feel that it has any chance of success.
Chris Farris
Sat 7 May 2005
Like that one that our founding fathers were non-interventionalist.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/050605B.html
One of the unpleasant realities that the young and still untested United States had to face at the turn of the 19th century was the threat of piracy against its merchant shipping in the Mediterranean. The leading European powers had long dealt with the threat by paying tribute – we would now say protection money – to the rulers of the Barbary States of North Africa: Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco. At first the United States followed suit, but in May 1801 the Pasha of Tripoli was overthrown by a usurper who brazenly demanded more and, when it was refused, declared war on the United States.
President Thomas Jefferson decided to fight, despite the fact that the Navy had been nearly dismantled after the Revolution. In August a blockade of Tripoli was established by Commodore Richard Dale, who had fought with John Paul Jones. The blockade, small and ineffective at first, continued for nearly four years and gradually, with reinforcements from home and some borrowed vessels from the King of the Two Sicilies, took command of the waters of the Barbary Coast. ….
The Tripolitan War may well be counted the first instance of America’s stepping forth to solve a problem on Europe’s doorstep, a line that runs down to the Balkans and the Middle East and Central Asia today. More significantly, it first thrust the United States into the unsought role of enforcer of international law against rogue states in league with terrorists.
So even 200 years ago, Europe sat idle while the US had to go make things right.
