re: America's Brutal Culture Wars Caused by 'The Return of the Gods'

quote:

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Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli is going to blow your mind.

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I love historical rabbit holes, so I checked this one out.

While knowing and understanding the Barbary Wars, I was not knowledgeable of the content of the Treaty.

It appears that Article II might not be what you contend it is.

From wiki, just the first stop down the rabbit hole - In 1931 Hunter Miller completed a commission by the United States government to analyze United States' treaties and to explain how they function and what they mean to the United States' legal position in relationship with the rest of the world.[21] According to Hunter Miller's notes, "the Barlow translation is at best a poor attempt at a paraphrase or summary of the sense of the Arabic" and "Article 11 ... does not exist at all."[13]

After comparing the United States' version by Barlow with the Arabic and the Italian version, Miller continues by claiming that:

The Arabic text which is between Articles 10 and 12 is in form a letter, crude and flamboyant and withal quite unimportant, from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. How that script came to be written and to be regarded, as in the Barlow translation, as Article 11 of the treaty as there written, is a mystery and seemingly must remain so. Nothing in the diplomatic correspondence of the time throws any light whatever on the point."

Hmmm.........