Writer Michael Oren releases a new book today on America’s history with the Middle East.
It was a precarious time for the United States. Americans overseas were being kidnapped by marauding Muslims while the government pursued a confused policy of both verbal admonishment and appeasement. What period am I talking about? Isn’t this what is going on now? Well, in a way yes, but this was also the situation faced by the newly minted United States of America between 1783 and 1815 where America fought its first foreign war in the Middle East and the first American soldiers to die in battle overseas were killed by Arabic-speaking hijackers.
