What young people dont understand about America and its wars

One of the most popular complaints of the younger Americans is that the United States has been bogged down in endless war and interventionism virtually their entire lifetimes.Welcome to history.As much as we may not like it, the United States has engaged in conflict and meddling more or less since its inception.The US was born in war.It expanded through war.

It freed its slaves through war.It grew into a superpower through war.And until utopia exists, it’s exceedingly likely we will need to clash with those who threaten our prestige and power.Indeed, you can look at the parallels between today’s war against the Iranian terrorist regime and our very first foreign conflict to understand why.From the founding, the Islamic states in Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis in North Africa were capturing American ships, demanding tolls and taking hostages.Without the protection of the British Royal Navy, President George Washington felt compelled to pay off the emirs.President John Adams was even more susceptible to blackmail, appeasing the Islamic rulers with ships, weaponry, ammunition and annual sums — let’s call them “pallets” — of gold and silver.The Barbary States took the bounty, strung the US along in negotiations, ultimately ignored the treaties they did sign, continued to take captives, murder Americans and disrupt trade.After winning the White House in 1801, Jefferson halted the payoffs.His justifications for fighting the Barbary “pirates” — a historical mischaracterization that understates the importance of the Islamic sultans who had been raiding coastal towns and ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic for two centuries, grabbing over a million European slaves — were more than just narrow trading interests.When serving as ambassador in Britain in 1785, Jefferson had met with Tripoli’s representative Abdul Rahman Adja and asked him why the Barbary States were targeting Americans who had shown them no hostility.Jefferson, in a letter co-written by...