History Repeats Itself with Somali Islamist Pirates

By Bill Wilson

On November 4th, 1979, a bunch of radical Islamists supported by the Iranian government stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. It was the signature of the Carter Administration-who helped depose the American-friendly Shah of Iran for the radical terrorist Islamic Ayatollah regime-a move that elevated the Islamic terrorist to international prominence. Carter, who also showed great public affection for another Islamic terrorist, Yassir Arafat, was considered weak by Islam. And instead of showing gratitude toward an American President who, in his mind at least, tried to treat them like members of the human race, the Islamists humiliated Carter with terrorist acts.

Now come so-called Somali pirates who have been hijacking ships and holding hostages in the international waters of the Indian Ocean, including crews from US owned ships. The Somali pirates are in actuality radical Islamists associated with a group in Somalia called Al Shabab. Al Shabab has strong ties to al Qaeda that has recruited Islamists from Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the United States to train in Somalia and to exercise its terrorist activities throughout Africa. According to maritime laws boarding a ship in the act of piracy is the same as setting foot on our own soil to attack citizens. There have been US warships dispatched to the area, but nothing is being done.

This is the first maritime attack by Islamic pirates since the Barbary pirates took hostage US ships off the African coast in 1815. But it was in 1786 that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with the leader of the Barbary pirates, who told them the Koran instructed the Islamists to plunder and enslave those sinners that didn't believe in allah. The US paid ransom payments to the Islamists to keep our ships and crews from falling into the Islamists' hands. But when Jefferson became President the payments ended and the marines were dispatched to Tripoli to free the hostages. By 1815, some 3,000 shipmates of various nations being held hostage for ransom were freed, ending the Barbary reign of terror.

Today, the man who occupies the Oval Office has shown great weakness by bowing to the Islamic king of Saudi Arabia, by telling the Islamic world that it has contributed to the positive development of America, and by appeasing the Islamists. He is suffering from the same treatment that President Carter received. And his inaction may well have the same result. The Iranian Islamists released the hostages without ransom when Ronald Reagan took office because they knew Reagan would kill them all. Rather than appease them with kind words and inaction, they should be destroyed. Proverbs 4:17 warns against fellowship with evil, "For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence."

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