The tide of liberty

In the last letter he ever wrote, Thomas Jefferson spoke of the abiding force carried by America's Declaration of Independence. "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to some later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government." His vision of America as a nation charged with the defense of liberty had not diminished in the half century since he authored that fine revolutionary document.\nPresident Bush is set on a course to orbit around Jefferson's radiant sun. But to those who think the tide began to turn against Middle Eastern despotism only after the liberation of Baghdad, Jefferson's dynamic first term is worth bearing in mind. \nBereft of protection from the Royal Navy, the ships of the newly independent American nation were vulnerable to Barbary maniacs, who would capture merchant ships and demand ransom. The Muslim raiders claimed the Quran as justification for this "trade." The Adams administration made a habit of paying the tribute. Rudyard Kipling would later write in "Dane-geld:" "It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,/To puff and look important and to say:—/Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you./We will therefore pay you cash to go away." \nUpon entering office, Jefferson swiftly reversed this oppression and shame. Despite dissent within his cabinet, Jefferson thought early that it would be "best to effect a peace through the medium of war." The recently constructed American navy was dispatched to bombard the Barbary States along the northwest coast of Africa as punishment for their depraved program of piracy. Jefferson had ended forever America's isolation from rogue regimes of the Old World. \nBy the end of April 1805, the war against Tripoli had come to a successful conclusion. But during the War of 1812, the British would suborn a new despot in Algiers to revive the practice. This Machiavellian plot backfired. As soon as the Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1815, a battle-hardened American squadron under Stephen Decatur secured a complete capitulation in Algiers. The reign of Barbary terror ceased, proving that the United States would henceforth be a force to reckon with. \nChristopher Hitchens has conceded that while Jefferson's dogged refusal to give into the Barbary States of the Ottoman Empire did not bring regime change to Algiers or Tripoli, it did achieve "regime behavior-modification." And "ever since then, every major system of tyranny in the world has had to run at least the risk of a confrontation with the United States." May it ever be thus. \nAll of this makes the case that the United States cannot shrug off the burden of shoring up the tide of liberty -- in Tripoli in 1805 or in Baghdad more than 200 years later. For Bush, as for all good Jeffersonians, the promotion and protection of liberal democracies will come at a high cost before the tide is turned. But turn it, we must.