A passage from Patrick O’Brian’s superb novel, The Hundred Days, the 19th of 20 works that chronicle the years of the Napoleonic wars and the lives of Capt. Jack Aubrey and Fleet Surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin, deserves our consideration as we explore our options in the Middle East. Back then, it was frigates or ships of the line; today it is nuclear reactors, fissionable material and WMD’s.
It is the spring of 1815. Napoleon Bonaparte has escaped from Elba and is greeted in Paris with cheers and hundreds of thousands of recruits to pursue his enemies across Europe. Having converted to Islam during his conquests in Egypt, he receives offers of support from the sultans and Imams of the East. Aubrey and Maturin receive instructions outlining specific terms of engagement:
"... But your most important task by far is to look into those Adriatic ports you know so well. Even the small places are capable of building a frigate, and we have reports of actual ships of the line on the stocks in four places … Where frigates, corvettes or sloops are concerned, particularly if they are unfinished, you must endeavor to stop the building and obtain their disarmament, all of which requires the utmost degree of tact … An incident would, as I have said, be disastrous: though of course if there is a clearly-expressed intent of joining Bonaparte, you must burn, sink or destroy as usual”.
In simple terms, our generation joins those many people of the last 1000 years who have found themselves confronted with the excessive armament of Islam, being either disposed to respond or inclined to close eyes. Not much has changed in terms of tactics and objectives. Disarm if you are able; but if not, you must detroy it. Somehow, this “timeless” issue has gotten lost in the clutter of political squabbling between factions who refuse to acknowledge the historical issues at play.
Full recognition and tribute is paid by this author to Patrick O’Brian (deceased) for the above excerpt from The Hundred Days. If you by some misfortune have not ventured into his mystical re-creation of England’s confrontation of Napoleonic tyranny via the Aubrey/Maturin cycle, there is still time for you to make the discovery. There is not a moment to lose.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
You have no Muslim friends, I presume
2 - mschannon
Welcome to BC, Poldark.
I must confess I am torn, and I understand Aaman's comment. Yet another part of me wonders where are the millions...billions of moderate Muslims in this? Why haven't they risen up and demanded an end to the madness? Why does financial support come from "good, middle-class" Muslims?
If all we hear is the politics of hatred and destruction with an occasional voice claiming that Islam is a religion of peace but no behavior backing up that claim, then how do we respond?
Poldark's historical analysis may be brief, but it's not inaccurate. Unfortunately, we have a president who's incapable of finding a diplomatic solution or even a military one that makes sense.
We're as much hostages to our own electoral stupidity as we are to the radical Islamic elements.
In Decaf Veritas...sigh.
3 - Dave Nalle
Mark, it's not our electoral stupidity we're at the mercy of, it's the manipulation of the political party insiders. We didn't elect Bush because we liked Bush or were stupidly sucked in by him. We elected Bush because we were not offered a better alternative. The political parties, through the primary process, offered us the two most mediocre, self-serving and glad-handing candidates they could come up with. In other words, electable candidates. What they did not offer us was candidates with backbone, convictions or truly new ideas. That's not what they prefer to trade in - too dangerous.
Dave
4 - Poldark Maximus
Aaman, actually quite the opposite. In the ‘80’s and ‘90’s Poldark Maximus dined with Sheikh’s in their desert tents in Dubai and Saudi and has business friends and acquaintances galore in the Region. He has also met with members of the Royal Family in their offices in Kuwait, complete with pre-1949 maps of the region on the wall with “Palestine” in an area currently known as “Israel”. At the time, it did not seem out of place. That was their desire then and one suspects not much has changed in the meantime. But we still did business there and arrangements were tidy. Friends? Sure. Some of them to this day.
Poldark Maximus just doesn’t care if he pisses them off anymore. The stakes have gone up, we have been dragged into cleaning up the mess in the Middle East left by the Brits and the French, the Italians and the Spaniards and then by the UN. You could argue that we really have no dog in this fight " that was how T. Jefferson viewed the matter, but then found it necessary in 1801 to send the Marines into Tripoli WITHOUT Congressional approval to put down piracy and slavery. We have been, as the story goes, involved since then in keeping the level of armaments at a level the world can tolerate, and that does not include nukes and WMD. It is not always easy in the desert to figure out what hides behind the next berm of sand. We don’t always have clear satellite images like the ones we have of Iran’s enrichment facilities. There is no one left on the planet, other than the US, to keep a lid on the place, and we seem to be growing very tired of doing that.
Shame fully so after only 200 years of engagement. The point of the original comments were only to suggest that this has been going on a lot longer than that. Something my friends in the Saudi desert are very quick to remind me.