Exactly pabianice. America had no Navy when Washington became our first president. There were years when he were losing one half the income from our export trade upon which were were desperately dependent, to Muslims, The Barbary Pirates. They forced and almost bankrupt America, reluctant to create a Navy because it might also provoke our former colonizer and our allies in the Revolutionary War into fearing our intentions - an early verision of the notion "Mutual Assured Destruction" in which defence is called a provocation.
We had courageous missionaries who went to the Middle East time and again only to be betrayed. They didn't understand the power of Jihad, and almost all payed not only with their lives, but with the lives of their families. Meanwhile there was a fascination with the myth of One Thousand and One Nights, and Arabian dancing girls, inspired by novelists and faux historians writing about a Casbah of which few had any dirct knowledge.
Ironically, the best current history of that period in American history was written by the current Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, who DID lecture at Harvard and Yale, a historian with degrees from Columbia and Princeton. He is also a combat veteran and senior IDF officer. The book is “Power, Faith, and Fantasy, America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present”.
In our formative years we actually paid protection money, both to Arab leaders, and sometimes, to nations with naval power, even including Britain, to attempt to protect our cargo. Raw materials were are most important source of revenue before we became an industrial power.
The Barbary Muslims were consistent with Koranic doctrine in the 18th Century, capturing European ships and enslaving their passengers and crew. They would offer conversion to Islam or the loss of ones head, a compelling bargain. There were many famous European Barbary Pirates, a red headed Swede with a new Islamic name, who took the deal rather than lose his red mane along with his head. The passengers would become slaves, many later sold back to their home countries.
With Obama, we don't, of course, know whether he is one of the pirates. But his actions, pushing Middle Eastern states fully into the camp of militant Islam, the break begun by the guileless Jimmy Carter, suggests that he is one of their more clever agents, a story Dr. Oren will hopefully survive the Obama attack to add to the next edition of his excellent book.