Teresita: “I disagree. One of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, signed a document to the effect that America was NOT at war with Islam. It reads like this:…”

Consider this extract from wikipedia: “In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then the ambassador to France, and John Adams, then the ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the ambassador to Britain from Tripoli. The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. The ambassador’s response was reported to the Continental Congress:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once. [15]

American ships sailing in the Mediterranean chose to travel close to larger convoys of other European powers who had bribed the pirates. Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual revenues in 1800.”

Subsequent to the period of the treaty you cite, we fought the Barbary Wars to put an end to the piracy and the enslavement of American citizens. The U.S. Navy was born in response to the threat in 1794 and was in construction during the period of the treaty.

Adams language was in the context of a treaty constituting appeasement and, in my opinion, should not be given too much weight in discussions of the present “unpleasantness”.

The cover of “religion” should not deter us from obliterating this self-described/b> totalitarian political movement, dwarfing in its evil those we have previously overcome.