Well, Ironside, score one for you in asking a loaded question. You stated "our nation’s first war, and it was with Islam" and wanted to know if anything had changed. I searched for a references, since you included quotes, and the closest I came was Christopher Hitchens' article, "Jefferson vs Muslim pirates" from City-Jounal.org. Reading the entire article and not trying to make a case for Muslim nefariousness reveals a lot of conflicting opinions.

For example, "One of the historians of the Barbary conflict, Frank Lambert, argues that the imperative of free trade drove America much more than did any quarrel with Islam or “tyranny,” let alone “terrorism.” He resists any comparison with today’s tormenting confrontations."

Until the conclusion of the War of Independence, American shipping had been protected by the British (prior to) and the French (during). After the conclusion of the revolution, American shipping became fair game just as other countries were subject to.

Whether the ambassador's comments were a true reflection of the purpose or an attempt to dissemble is a subject of debate. Since there are over two hundred years of history between then and now, I fail to see any relevance between the actions of Barbary pirates (pecuniary gain) and now (I presume you are referring to Muslim outrage over the cheap, poorly made film obviously designed to elicit such reacion).

I do not believe our nation's first war was with Islam. It was against pirates, acting under the auspices of the Turkish empire. Religion may have been a convenient excuse for one ambassador to offer to another. But, in my opinion, money was the name of the game. Just as with Somalia pirates today. They may be Muslim, but they're just thieves.

I am no student of early Continental wars and therefore have no comment on the blog in general, but I was struck by Bryant’s editorial note “I presume you are referring to Muslim outrage over the cheap, poorly made film obviously designed to elicit such reacion” (sic).

Some thoughts on this: The filmmaker is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian American. Not surprisingly he wanted to retaliate somehow against the Islamics who have killed and injured so many of his brethren in Egypt.

In one incident, on October 9 2011, Islamic police killed at least two dozen Copts and wounded more than a hundred who were peacefully demonstrating against the attack and destruction of their church. There has been no outrage or even serious recognition of this from our government. Human Rights Watch has been calling for an investigation, but neither the government nor the international community has shown much interest.

However the Government is so outraged by the criticism of Islam in an amateur movie that Secretary of State Clinton stated “To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage” No mention of the murders committed by the “great religion” against Christians, who she must believe, belong to a lesser religion.

The criticism of the people of Sharia also shocked Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who described it as ”.... a very hateful very offensive video that has offended many people around the world” Obviously our official vindicators of Islam consider criticism more hateful and offensive than the killing of Christian protesters.

A single brave Christian has made a video that denigrates the people that murdered his fellow Christians. At the same time he has demonstrated how easy it is to trigger the cynical organized bawling of the religion of eternal outrage. I think he deserves a medal for reminding the civilized world of the true intent of Islam... and the disgraceful capitulation of our government to their bullying tactics.

Passinthru,
Nakoula Bassesley Nakoula may be a Christian ,but he most certainly is not a practicing Christian given his long rap sheet.Let's not revisit the religious wars of the past or some of our recent neocon misadventures.

Passinthru, so what is "...the true intent of Islam."?