U.S. troops have been on this hunt before

President Bush has said that we are engaged in "a new kind of war," in which the armed forces have been dispatched to hunt down the al-Qaida terrorists led by Osama bin Laden. The president is essentially correct but not quite historically accurate.

Around 1800, Muslim pirates along the Barbary Coast of North Africa ranged into the Mediterranean to plunder European and American ships. To buy the pirates off, European governments paid tribute. So did the Americans, to the tune of $18,000 a year beginning in 1799.

President Jefferson decided to put a stop to that and sent naval squadrons to blockade the pirates' ports and bombard fortresses ashore. In 1804, Stephen Decatur led 74 volunteers into Tripoli harbor to burn the captured U.S. warship Philadelphia.

A year later, U.S. Marines stormed a pirate stronghold in Tripoli and hoisted an American flag over the fort. Hence the refrain "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Corps Hymn. Further naval bombardments ended the threat from the Barbary pirates several years later.

Landlocked Afghanistan seems out of reach for the Marines and more a target for Army Rangers or Green Berets. Maybe someday they can add a line to their hymns -- "to the streets of Kandahar."

Richard Halloran

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