[Nateman]

...We never heard George Washington say during his Presidency that we should go to the middle east...

True. Jefferson, however , went to war to stop the Islamic Piracy of America ships in the Mediterranean Sea. It was America's first foreign war.

[Verginius Rufus]

Jefferson’s war against the Barbary pirates was America’s first foreign war—if you don’t count the 1775 invasion of Canada (but that was before the Declaration of Independence).