President Donald Trump is taking a lot of heat for the military operations he launched unilaterally as Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces against the Iranian pirates/terrorists: (1) striking Iran militarily, (2) closing the Strait of Hormuz to Iranian oil exports, and (3) aiming (I expect successfully) to force Iran into capitulation. In fact, what President Trump is doing today with Iran is nothing more than a long overdue exercise of U.S. military power, of the sort that Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison engaged in, without congressional approval, against the Barbary Pirates from 1801 to 1815.
The Barbary pirates were an early 19th century analog of the modern-day Iranian terrorist regime. They preyed on American and European trading ships and enslaved their crews. It is estimated that over 1 million American and European sailors were sold into slavery by the Barbary pirates during the centuries in which they preyed on American and European shipping. Robert Davis, British Slaves on the Barbary Coast, BBC (February 17, 2011). The Barbary pirates sailed out of Libya and North Africa generally until France conquered Algeria in 1830.
Congress never declared war against the Barbary pirates, but Presidents Jefferson and Madison rightly used their executive Commander-in-Chief powers unilaterally to cause American ships and marines to subdue them with the use of U.S. armed force. This defeated the Barbary pirates, and the Framing generation, which was still mostly alive from 1801 to 1815, acquiesced in the constitutionality of this unilateral presidential use of military force. The United States has fought only five declared wars in our history since 1789—the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. But U.S. Presidents, acting as Commanders in Chief, have unilaterally deployed our armed forces many other times.
