Letter: History shows flaw in 'blowback' argument

The May 15 letter "Let’s call it what it really is,” in blaming American Mideast actions for the attempted Islamist bombing in Times Square, shows a commensurate ignorance of history.

From 1600-1800 Barbary (Moroccan) and Ottoman Islamist pirates hijacked thousands of European and (after 1776) U.S. merchant vessels for million-dollar ransoms. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson (ambassador to France) and John Adams (ambassador to Britain) asked Morocco’s Abd al-Rahman why they were doing this. The response left Jefferson and Adams aghast: "It was written in the Koran that all nations who did not acknowledge Muslim’s authority were sinners and it was their right and duty to make war upon whomever they could find ... .” (Adams and Jefferson’s letters to John Jay March 28, 1786)

The hijackings continued. Jefferson became president in 1801. Rather than pay tribute, he decided to fight those who attacked the United States’ merchant shipping and sent the U.S. Marines to Tripoli (1801-1805) — hence "to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marines’ hymn. This was the first U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

Islamists then, as now, see world dominion as a theologic imperative.

The concept of moral equivalence — where the arsonist and the fireman are perceived as equal — is a sad political absurdity of our day.

Americans who blame our country for defending itself are what Lenin called "useful idiots” — giving moral and material support to a totalitarian ideology, thus braiding the rope that would hang them.  

Fred Korr

Oakland