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2011-05-30 -Short Attention Span Theater-
Remains of ‘first Navy Seals’ lie in Tripoli
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Posted by Steve White 2011-05-30 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11126 views ]  Top

#1 
This event in history had a butterfly effect on US military. The first attempt was not resolved but the second was clearly a determined effort of closure. The loser loses.
Posted by Dale 2011-05-30 08:14||   2011-05-30 08:14|| Front Page Top

#2 ...I'm about 1/2 done writing a book about this story, so seeing this was quite interesting. I've got to point out though that there have been intermittent efforts to recover the remains over the years, and after the last ones - right around the time of Operation Eldorado Canyon in 1986 - the Libyans said that "the Italians must have moved the bodies" in the 30s. Sadly, it's likely that they were disinterred and destroyed as revenge for Eldorado Canyon.

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2011-05-30 09:58||   2011-05-30 09:58|| Front Page Top

#3 MK that is a timely peace of work you have. The Barbary pirates and the early 1900's is allot of history to tell. That's why I visit here you never know who might be out there. I will blow a puff of wind your way to help you along (butterfly effect).
Posted by Dale 2011-05-30 10:50||   2011-05-30 10:50|| Front Page Top

#4 The story of the Barbary Wars will remain buried because it doesn't fit the PC indoctrination of the ruling caste. Africans conducting piracy and slaving of American sailors and travelers. Those they couldn't ransom, they sold into slavery. Remember white people can only the be bad guy and no other narrative is tolerated.
Posted by Procopius2k 2011-05-30 12:07||   2011-05-30 12:07|| Front Page Top

#5 P2K -

You better believe it. From my book, a brief epilogue about Yusuf Bey Karamanli , the Dey of Tripoli these men so bravely fought:

"...Brother Yusef Bey, on the other hand, seems to have enjoyed life for almost three more decades. He did – pretty much – keep to his word on not molesting US shipping, though with Yusef one could never be quite sure. There were some fairly substantial challenges to his rule - most notably by two plucky relatives named Mehmed and Mehmed ibn’ Ali, who between them took a crack at Yusef an astounding five times. On the other hand, Yusef doesn’t seem to have been too hard on them - not the usual way one dealt with recalcitrant family members in that part of the world, but Yusef seems to have taken it in stride. By 1819 though, the corsairs were almost all gone and this would have put something of a crimp in Yusef’s ability to maintain the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. Searching for new sources of income Yusef hit upon one that, sadly, may still be found in some parts of the world - the slave trade, in particular the sub-Saharan variant of that vile custom. Yusef was no fool - although the United Kingdom and the United States had banned the slave trade in 1807 and 1808 respectively, in Africa the horrors continued well into the twentieth century and in some North African countries the practice is officially outlawed but continues in ’secret’. Yusef, however, had no real problems profiting from the misery of others - it was, as the saying goes, nothing personal. Business was good for about ten more years, and then things started to finally and truly go wrong for the Dey of Tripoli. First, the British, who were asserting themselves in Africa, declared the slave trade piracy in 1827 - punishable, by the way, by Death - and in 1833 banned slavery outright. The Royal Navy grimly hunted down slave traders foolish enough to take their cargo to sea, and even Yusef knew better than to challenge the might of the most powerful fleet on the planet. Slaves were still bought and sold to Tripoli’s south, but less and less money could be gained from that particular market. The game was not quite up for Yusef, but he could see it coming - assuming he wanted to, which apparently he did not. The silks, the jewels, and the palaces stayed, but the glory of Tripoli fled. The Tripolitian economy began to nosedive, aggravated by Yusef’s unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious. By 1830, Yusef was now in his mid-60s, no longer the terror he had been thirty years before and refusing to admit the world had changed. Rulers in that position tend to discover that there are wolves circling, and Yusef was no different. And in the best traditions of that sort of thing, the wolves were already in his fold.
Yusef had three sons, who were probably every bit as cruel, despotic, and hedonistic as their father. And each of them was quite sure that he deserved to sit on the throne of Tripoli, spending a great deal of time and theoretically secret effort on making sure they were the ones who prevailed. As with most despotic courts each one had a small group of followers, who eventually coalesced into three factions that were gunning to make their man Dey. The intrigues and plots would have been fascinating to observe were it not for the fact that the losers would have at best found themselves in exile or at worst found themselves kneeling before a chopping block in Tripoli town while a herald reminded the onlookers of the fate of traitors and a hooded executioner stood behind a scimitar. But by 1832, Yusef seems to have finally realized that the old days were gone for good, and if he allowed his sons to get into an uncontrolled fight for what was left, he might very well be the first casualty. So, at the age of 66, Yusef pulled off what he hoped would be his greatest coup - he abdicated and appointed his son Ali II as Dey of Tripoli, Ali apparently having impressed his father with his skill, charisma, and cunning, not to mention the almost certain promise that Yusef would be allowed to live out his life in unmolested peace.
All in all, not a bad plan on Yusef’s part, and had things been slightly different in that part of the world, he might have pulled it off. Unfortunately, Ali’s siblings did not take the news of their brother’s rise to power with the equanimity and decency that Yusef had hoped. They rose up against Ali and a full-blown civil war broke out, aided and abetted by the Two Mehmets who had so bedeviled Yusef in the past. What happened next is slightly unclear, but troops from the Ottoman Empire - then undergoing one of its periodic moments of lucidity during its long decline - came in 1835 to ‘keep the peace’. There is the possibility that Ali got just a little too clever for his own good and invited the Ottomans in, thinking that they would be kind enough to conquer his country back for him. If so, it was a bad idea. The Ottomans promptly deposed Ali and set up their own governor, writing finis to the saga of the Karamanli dynasty. Yusef himself survived for three more years, finally dying quite peacefully and in bed in 1838. One may safely assume that there were a great many sailors and Marines who were not at all unhappy to see him off to commune with the Prophet."


Change a few dates and names and it would be hard to tell that two hundred and eight years have passed.

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2011-05-30 14:20||   2011-05-30 14:20|| Front Page Top

#6 Interesting. Quite well written, Mike -- I'd be interested in seeing more. Let us know where to get it when it goes to publication, please.
Posted by trailing wife 2011-05-30 15:26||   2011-05-30 15:26|| Front Page Top

#7 Interesting. Quite well written, Mike -- I'd be interested in seeing more. Let us know where to get it when it goes to publication, please.
Posted by trailing wife 2011-05-30 15:26||   2011-05-30 15:26|| Front Page Top

#8 Miss TW, coming from you that is one of the nicest compliments I could have asked for. It's called To Barbary's Far Shore, and I'm hoping to have it in print in early 2012. My previous book, The Long Patrol (about the CSS H.L. Hunley) is available through amazon.com.

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2011-05-30 16:04||   2011-05-30 16:04|| Front Page Top

#9 Hey Mike - you have a ISBN number for that The Long Patrol book you mentioned. Found several in Amazon - from Vietnam to Burma to Battlestar Gallactica...
Posted by CrazyFool 2011-05-30 17:19||   2011-05-30 17:19|| Front Page Top

#10 Good stuff Mike.
Posted by swksvolFF 2011-05-30 17:32||   2011-05-30 17:32|| Front Page Top

#11 CF -

There's no ISBN as it's self-published. The page on amazon is:

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Patrol-Hunley-Charleston-Civil/dp/B004J1KZF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1306791150&sr=1-1

And SwksvolFF, thank you very much. :)

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2011-05-30 17:37||   2011-05-30 17:37|| Front Page Top

#12 MK I was thinking of what you said as I read your work "Change a few dates and names and it would be hard to tell that two hundred and eight years have passed". El Quaddafi and Yusef are so similar old warriors trapped in the old days and old ways. Warrior is a stretch but they believe they are something like stolen valor.
Posted by Dale 2011-05-30 19:56||   2011-05-30 19:56|| Front Page Top

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