Revisionist History

Addressing Egyptians in Cairo in 2009, the newly-minted president said:

"I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story,”

He goes on to extoll the wonderful contributions Muslims have made to America, conveniently stopping before mentioning the 2001 efforts at urban renewal in Manhattan. He also leaves out the early years when George III informed the Muslims in the Barbary States that the protection money England had been paying them would be reduced as it no longer covered the upstarts in the American colonies.

According to a Heritage Foundation paper, shortly after America's founding, the United States "was dragged into the affairs of the Islamic world by an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim pirates, the terrorists of the era," who looted American ships and captured American sailors, holding them for ransom or selling them as slaves.

The paper notes that America's struggle with Muslim pirates from the Barbary States (modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776 and continued for roughly four decades.

Islam has been at war with the entire world since its founding. It has lasted as long as it has because the world seems to have no stomach for defeating it.