By Jennifer Baker
REVOLUTION NEWS on 07/03/2015
A recent report
by the United States Congressional Research Service details hundreds of
overseas military deployments spanning more than two centuries. The
scope of and justification for the deployments vary wildly, from
conflicts with pirates and bandits to formal declarations of war against
an array of sovereign nations.
Explore where, when and why US armed forces have been deployed using our interactive map.
Pirates, raiders and ruffians
Adventurers, brigands, freebooters, privateers, pirates, raiders, ruffians, smugglers and thieves. These terms are all used to describe the wide variety of groups the US military fought in early conflicts.
Pirates
were a common enemy on the high seas, as were cross-border raiders
preying on outlying US townships and settlements. During the eight years
between 1815 and 1823, there were more than 3,000 pirate attacks on “merchantmen” (non-naval vessels) reported, a rate of more than one per day.
There
is a gap of more than a century between the final two reported actions
against pirates. Conflicts with pirates seem to wind down throughout the
19th century, finishing with US forces destroying the pirate ship Forward in 1870. But modern times have seen a renewal of US naval forces being deployed against pirates, with the report noting a 2012 operation by “Special Operations Forces” to rescue Ms Jessica Buchanan “who had been kidnapped by a group linked to Somali pirates and financiers”.
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