Our Founders fought a Middle East war centuries ago. We could learn a lot from them

Writing to his trusted ally, the Marquis de Lafayette, after the War of Independence, George Washington believed it "the highest disgrace" that Americans were "tributary to such banditti who might for half the sum that is paid them be exterminated from the Earth." Those "banditti" were the Barbary pirates of North Africa who preyed on American merchant ships in the Mediterranean, enslaving their crews and endangering the nascent republic’s economy.

But lacking the naval power to protect its foreign trade...