The first war the United States lost was the first war the United States fought, the war with the Barbary pirates:
Adams had been building a navy, but when Jefferson took over he stopped construction on the ships of the line, kept the frigates in commission and preserved every single naval shore station, apparently for purely pork reasons. The United States thereby became a very minor naval power.
The Dey of Tripoli had a habit of sending out his ships to capture merchantmen of countries who could not protect them, and the United States was obviously an example. The ships were captured and the crew enslaved, although he was normally anxious to have them ransomed. He was willing to stop the behavior for any country that was willing to make him regular payments, and some of the other minor powers made such payments.
The Americans took up the slogan “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute’ and sent what was left of the navy out to attack Tripoli. They based themselves in Malta and from time to time sailed to Tripoli where they bombarded the city. Although this attack on civilians rather resembled our air war in World War II, it was obviously much less effective. The guns fired round shot and the city was mainly mud brick and hence easily repaired.
In the course of one of these raids the Philadelphia ran aground and was captured by the Tripolitan forces which floated it into Harbor and put its now enslaved crew at work improving the fortifications of Tripoli. In a daring raid, indeed the only daring raid of the war, Decatur succeeded in burning the Philadelphia at anchor.
The Dey showed no signs of being other than mildly annoyed by the bombardment and the war might have gone on indefinitely had not the US army taken a hand. An army officer, with a few Marines, collected another potential heir to the throne in Cairo, moved across the desert taking the second city of the kingdom, Derna, en route, and approached Tripoli with the intention of attacking it. The advance created a crisis, first for the Dey who was apparently uncertain of his ability to defend the city, granted that his relative would have some supporters within the walls, and, more importantly, for the navy which did not want the army to win the war after the navy had spent so much time with nothing to show for their efforts.
An emergency peace was patched up in which the United states paid a large ransom for the Americans held by the Tripolitanians. Thus we ended up paying tribute and clearly lost the war. We were down the tribute and one frigate while the Dey of Tripoli got the money and had his defenses strengthened by the labor of his American prisoners. The part of the wall they had worked on was called the Philadelphia bastion in remembrance of their labor. The millions for defense was responded to by laying up most of the frigates, although the pork rich shore installations were retained.
This is exactly the sort of story I’d expect to see Moldbug turn up (that’s a compliment).
It is truly fascinating to see how much of the history of the USA has been presented in such a manner as to utterly disregard facts.