[Rocky]

There is nothing less civilized than rewarding evil and thus guaranteeing more of it. High-minded as it is commonly made to sound, it is not civilized to appease evil, to treat it with “dignity and respect,” to rationalize its root causes, to equivocate about whether evil really is evil, and, when all else fails, to ignore it — to purge the very mention of its name — in the vain hope that it will just go away. Evil doesn’t do nuance. It finds you, it tests you, and you either fight it or you’re part of the problem.

One of the best paragraphs ever appearing in any column.

[rbg81]

Yes, that is a good paragraph. Where is it from? I’d like to reference it.

I do agree the West has become so civilized that we’ve lost our edge. Our adversaries smell weakness and our response doesn’t help.

IMHO, a big part of the problem is that there is almost no incentive for the pirates to stop what they are doing. You need to deter them on several levels. Plaing superior weapons & trained personnel on the ships would help. But that would raise the cost of shipping and related wrongful-death lawsuits. So, you also need to make an example of these pirate communities so that no one would contemplate doing it for some time to come. Unfortunately, that would not be perceived as “civilized”, so it will not happen. Pinprick strikes might be just, but they seem to have zero long term deterrent value.

[CRBDeuce]

There is nothing less civilized than rewarding evil and thus guaranteeing more of it. High-minded as it is commonly made to sound, it is not civilized to appease evil, to treat it with “dignity and respect,” to rationalize its root causes, to equivocate about whether evil really is evil, and, when all else fails, to ignore it — to purge the very mention of its name — in the vain hope that it will just go away. Evil doesn’t do nuance. It finds you, it tests you, and you either fight it or you’re part of the problem.

Words to live by all right, and words that OB will never, never understand.