. History as a guide:
It's now forgotten that capitulation didn't
work. Simply didn't work. The Barbary Pirates raised their demands
until the Pashas were taking nearly 20 per cent of Federal Revenue. But
in the beginning the policy of appeasement seemed perfectly. The
initial extortion demand of $70,000 was far smaller than the
astronomical $2 million dollars requested by Thomas Jefferson to build
a Navy. In the end it proved cheaper to crush them.
Rather
quickly, American ships bring the North Africans to heel, cementing the
United States' role as a power broker in the Middle East. Before he
revised it in the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key's "Star-Bangled
Banner" - which would become the American national anthem - described
"turbaned heads bowed" to the "brow of the brave." No longer weak,
then, America invites no more insults. Strengthened, in fact, it begins
to deliver a few of its own.