Posted on 04/13/2009 1:18:23 PM PDT by Delacon
Now that the crisis has passed with the Maersk Alabama and Captain Richard Phillips, along with three of the four pirates holding him, we need to determine how to avoid this in the future. Fred Iklé has a couple of common-sense suggestions in the Washington Post today, mostly by returning to traditional methods of exterminating piracy:
So why do we keep rewarding Somali pirates? How is this march of folly possible?
Start by blaming the timorous lawyers who advise the governments attempting to cope with the pirates such as those who had been engaged in a standoff with U.S. hostage negotiators in recent days. These lawyers misinterpret the Law of the Sea Treaty and the Geneva Conventions and fail to apply the powerful international laws that exist against piracy. The right of self-defense — a principle of international law — justifies killing pirates as they try to board a ship.
Nonetheless, entire crews are unarmed on the ships that sail through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Shipowners pretend that they cannot trust their crews with weapons, but the facts don’t add up.
We’ve heard a number of excuses over the past couple of weeks for why crews have no access to weapons when traveling through the Gulf of Aden and other dangerous waters. Some ships have access to non-lethal weapons, such as sonic guns, designed to create tremendous pain so that pirates can’t get aboard the ship in the first place. Once boarded, however, crews are unarmed and at the mercy of the pirates, a completely unacceptable choice given the wide knowledge of the existence of piracy. If the crew members themselves aren’t qualified to carry weapons — and there’s no reason they can’t be qualified — the shipping companies should hire security forces for ships passing by the Horn of Africa.
Iklé has another good suggestion:
The international right of self-defense would also justify an inspection and quarantine regime off the coast of Somalia to seize and destroy all vessels that are found to be engaged in piracy.
This should actually be the next mission for the US Navy after freeing Phillips. We don’t need a quarantine and inspection to identify some of the boats and ports in question; I’d bet dollars to donuts we’ve already identified most of them. Our next step after killing the pirates on the lifeboat is torpedoing their ships in their home ports without inspections or even warnings. Somalia’s failed state can’t impose order on these areas, but if the pirates become a liability rather than an asset to these facilities, they’ll get the heave-ho soon enough.
In the future, we don’t need the lawyers and the FBI negotiators, and we especially don’t need to legitimize Somali “elders”, either. Iklé has that right; piracy is not a bank robbery. The entire point of piracy is to capture ships in territory where no nation can claim sovereignty and therefore work outside the civil law. The proper response to that is military, not some notion of cops and robbers. When pirates find out we’re serious, and when enough of them wind up at the bottom of the ocean, they’ll think twice about seizing American or Western shipping.
I disagree. The US has a long proud history of clearing the worlds sea lanes of pirates. We are REALLY good at it. Because piracy is every country’s problem, we only benefit when we help out in erradicating it. We cons are all for free markets. Markets aren’t free when they are held hostage to pirates.
My favorite feature of the MK19 was not so much the size of the death pill that came out of the muzzle, but the rapidity with which it could empty a 48-round ammo can ;-)
SEALS
We have *enough bailouts* on the table.
There’s absolutely no reason for the American Taxpayer to pay more bailout money — for the costs of our military to solve the problems created by other countries in the world (and their shipping companies) because they ended up paying ransoms for several years...
I say *no more bailouts* — there’s enough bailout money on the table in this Obama Administration....
...Ickle is an idiot - you don’t sink fishing skiffs with a torpedo; even small trawlers aren’t work a quarter-million dollar fish...
...five inch shells are an altogether different matter...
start blowing pirates into pieces the size of a Cherrio, and they’ll stop pirating.
Unleash the Holy Hell On Earth that is our United States Military and send them screaming into the night.
It’s not rocket science, is it? Stephen Decatur and the U.S. Marine Corps had it figured out 200 years ago.
Saying that the US eradicating piracy is a bailout is like saying that that the US eradicating the Third Reich was a bailout. Hitler was everybody’s problem. The US was simply the best country available to solve it. Same goes for piracy be it off the coast of Somalia or anywhere else.
Proper way to stop pirating is to go in and kill off a bunch, Destroy their bases and their ships.
Put enough power in place to make a proper show of force and don’t pussy foot around.
What obamma lamma ding dong will do is give the somali area some of MY money to help them live better.
Won’t some one please kick some sense in to this “magic negro?
You said — The US was simply the best country available to solve it. Same goes for piracy be it off the coast of Somalia or anywhere else.
—
Nope, the U.S. is *not* the best one to do it — especially when it’s not our problem in the first place. We’ll take care of our own shipping and let the pirates know what will happen with *our ships* — and the other countries’ ships are *on their own* — with no “bailouts” from the U.S. Taxpayer...
I don’t even have to read the article. The answer is: Elect true Conservatives. That will take care of the pirates both in Somalia, AND in D.C.
Burn the ports and hang the pirates. Thanks for asking me such an easy question, I didn’t even need math.
Exactly? Why is anyone even asking the question, when the answer is so obvious?
“Nope, the U.S. is *not* the best one to do it — especially when it’s not our problem in the first place. We’ll take care of our own shipping and let the pirates know what will happen with *our ships* — and the other countries’ ships are *on their own* — with no “bailouts” from the U.S. Taxpayer...”
Thats like getting pee out of the pool. You can’t seperate it. US made exports go on foreign flagged ships. Cargo made by US owned corporations in other countries go in foreign flagged ships. Businesses here in the US rely on foreign cargo making it to market here. Beside that, we already pay our military to handle situations such as this. Its one of the things they have been paid to do since the Barbary pirate days(did our navy attempt to determine which Barbary pirate ships attacked US ships? I don’t think so). Look we are either going to have other countries and business pay the cost to eliminate the piracy problem and pass the cost onto us as consumers or have our navy quickly and efficiently solve the problem. JMO but I think the most cost effective way is the latter.
Apply the Jefferson Template. It worked then. It’ll work just fine today.
Pirates go to sea, never to return.
“Sea monsters got ‘em”.
(Unless their bodies wash up on a beach somewhere.)
When those other countries come begging at our White House steps and “show us the money” (by paying for it and *not* the American Taxpayer with another “bailout”) — then we can show them how it’s done...
Until then — tough luck to all those other maroons...
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