America's First War on Terror

Bill Bennett has a new book, "America: The Last Best Hope," in which he discusses one of America's first foreign crises in the form of Arab raids on shipping on the African coast. Thomas Jefferson confronted an Arab diplomat over the issue:

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.

I guess Islam was the religion of peace even back then. Bennett's book looks like another good read.