So... your frame here is wildly anachronistic. The Barbary States weren't "Muslim Extremists", and they weren't on some sort of Anti-American crusade.

They were a collection of North African states which exercised maritime control over key shipping lanes in the Mediterranean. The driving force for them was monetary, forcing payments of tribute by countries to allow their shipping to go through, and harassing the merchant ships of those countries which didn't play ball This impacted all countries, not just the USA. Big countries usually chose to pay as it was easier to deal with that way, but when the US gained independence, they no longer were covered by the British payments. Lacking a Navy, they had to pay, but it was exorbitant. I go into this in much more detail here, but the end result was that this was one of the key driving forces in the construction of the frigates what would form the backbone of the early US Navy, and eventually see the US go to war twice with the Barbary States to bring an end to their stranglehold on the region.