Smug citation of precedent

For More Than 200 Years, America Has Shunned A 'War On Islam'

Both use of the expression and the actual thing.

The piece of the Treaty of Tripoli so often quoted only explains that the government of the US, being essentially secular and moved by essentially secular interests, would not go to war against the Barbary States or any Muslim power for any "pretext arising from religious opinions."

Article 11.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

There is not a word in it about what might have moved Muslim states or Muslims at that time, much less to contradict the blatantly "religious pretexts" for so much Muslim violence today, most of it against other Muslims but some of it, from time to time, against the US or other non-Muslim states.

And of course, the Barbary Pirates didn't take out the biggest buildings in New York and blow up the Pentagon on the same day, killing more than 3,000 people, alleging as their key reason the religious opinion that the temporary stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia was sacrilegious.