Posts Tagged ‘Stephen Decatur’

1st Romana: Stop! I have new evidence.
4th Doctor: Too late. I’ve just been executed.

Doctor Who The Stones of Blood 1978

A little US History.

Two hundred and twenty years ago Thomas Jefferson sent a flotilla under Edward Prebble to teach the Barbary Pirates that imprisoning and enslaving Americans was not acceptable. Despite successes by him and his officers such as Stephen Decatur Prebble was eventually recalled and a half a dozen years later the US found itself engaged in a war with Great Britain, a war where American Warships embarrassed the most powerful navel power in the world repeatedly both in single ship actions and in fleet actions.

By the time the war was over the British Navy had instructed their warships not to engage American vessels alone (This didn’t help as the USS Constitution took a pair of British warships the  HMS Cyane and HMS Levant before the news of peace came through.) and the US navy emboldened by their victories was busy building capital ships and frigates and decided that having stood strong against the greatest empire the world had seen they were no longer going to kowtow to the Barbary States.

So for a second time Captain Decatur was sent to the Mediterranean Sea this time with the largest and most powerful US fleet ever assembled to make terms.

He took two Algerian warships in battle killing the captain of their fleet and sailed into Algiers. When the Bey tried to bluff him he revealed the capture of their ships and the death of the Algerian admiral and as soon as it was clear that he was ready to take their entire fleet the Dey was suddenly amenable to leaving American ships and citizens alone without requiring a bribe.

Having accomplished this he sailed next to Tunis and Tripoli and by the time he was done all three Barbary Pirate states had signed treaties declaring that they would no longer be attacking American ships and holding Americans for ransom.

A few weeks later Captain William Bainbridge, whose fleet had been delayed showed up at all three of those ports making sure that the Algerians, Tunisians and Tripolians understood that messing with the United States was a bad idea.

The size of the fleets made a difference in these decision but the thing that really sold the deal was Decatur taking their flagship and killing their admiral at the start making it clear to the Bey in the words of today, that if he fucked around he would find out.

I could not help but thing of this when Columbia discovered that Trump wasn’t kidding around.

You see two military planes were sent with Columbian criminals on them being deported. The Columbian president refused to let them land and made a rather public statement about how he wasn’t going to take them.

Minutes later Trump answered on truth social announcing a 25% Tariffs and all kinds of restrictions on the Columbian government to take effect immediately promising to make the 25% 50% if things didn’t change and then continued to play his game of golf.

Before he had finished the course Columbia had a public statement offering government plains to take his citizens back. The reversal was so fast that they left/media was still hitting Trump for the moves and bemoaning the price increases on coffee and flowers this would lead to after the Columbians had already folded.

Then Trump posted this:

The Columbian leader put out a macho face saving rant but the diplomats quickly came back into line:

Shortly after Petro published his diatribe, Bogotá announced it would accept the flights. United States officials subsequently announced they would not immediately impose retaliatory measures.

“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a statement on Sunday night.

“The visa sanctions issued by the State Department, and enhanced inspections from Customs and Border Protection, will remain in effect until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned,” she added.

The more I think of this the more I believe Trump should send Petro a thank you card he couldn’t have asked for a better result

If you are going to convince people you are serious you need to set an example. Petro’s pushback and subsequent surrender has put the word out that Trump means it.

And if people think a man who came within a 1/2 of an inch of being shot is going to be intimidated by tin pot leftists or lefty media members and editors have another think coming.

And his courage is going to embolden others who were previously timid in the face of the deep state.

I suspect Trump knows who Decatur is but wasn’t trying to be Decatur, he was just being Trump moving forward for the sake of America.

Trump has taken up Decatur’s mantle and he’s running with it, let our enemies, foreign and domestic beware.