[ During Jefferson’s presidency, we fought the Barbary (Muslim) pirates to re-establish freedom of the seas. Jefferson was no isolationist. ]
AND we didn’t try to bring democracy to those savages in north Africa either, we went in, broke crap, removed their capacity for piracy and LEFT.
Ironically, Jefferson was one of the most prominent proponents of nation-building in North Africa, specifically Liberia, as a place to relocate former slaves from the U.S.