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 dont add up.
Weve 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 cant 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 arent qualified to carry weapons and theres no reason they cant 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 dont need a quarantine and inspection to identify some of the boats and ports in question; Id bet dollars to donuts weve 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. Somalias failed state cant impose order on these areas, but if the pirates become a liability rather than an asset to these facilities, theyll get the heave-ho soon enough.
In the future, we dont need the lawyers and the FBI negotiators, and we especially dont 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 were serious, and when enough of them wind up at the bottom of the ocean, theyll think twice about seizing American or Western shipping.
“Just give us some time to blow the men down.”
Barney Frank would approve.
Data Mine the Internet. Key word “arrrrrrrrrrr.”
Bullets.
Don't download songs and videos without paying for them?
“Don’t download songs and videos without paying for them”?
There’s one in every bunch.
At sea? Cannon is the traditonal method. On land? If captured, rope.
Depends on when ‘before’ is. Caesar and a series of crosses come to mind if you’re talking antiquity.
Apparently not. I've been waiting for the call all week. ;o)
If the owners of Ships with U.S. registrations could claim 102% of the cost of a Liability Insurance rider covering Armed Crews as a tax deduction; those ships would be safer, sooner.
The Washington pirates are stealing trillions from us and holding us, our children, and our grandchildren hostages for ransom.
The Somali pirates are only boarding or stealing a few ships for chump change. We can live with them. But we can't survive much longer with the Washington pirates in charge and running our ship!
While it's true that the best deterrent is to kild the thugs, the area of their operation is what?; 1 million square miles?! And I might be off by a factor of 10.
I believe that true deterrence has less to do with punishment, but the surety of discovery and capture. Burglars continue to burgle because they blieve the odds are on their side.
Until the worlds countries of the world find this out and work together to do this, it will go on.The U.S. does not have the assets to do it alone.
And..... the cost of the ransoms is added to the price of everything you buy.
“Nope, the U.S. is *not* the best one to do it...and the other countries ships are *on their own*”
All we need to do is send these shipping companies the bill for all U.S. anti-piracy operations and stop unloading their ships in U.S. ports until said bills are paid in full.
You’ll see the laws against piracy enforced and the problem will disappear very quickly, I should think. And U.S. taxpayers won’t have to pay for it.
You said — And U.S. taxpayers wont have to pay for it.
—
That would be good, but I would have to see that one in detail before I would go along with it.... :-)
Good point.
“Those who remember George Satayana are doomed to repeat him”
LOL. I like that. My wife and I were watching an episode of Corner Gas the other night and couldn’t stop laughing when one of the characters said “A pen in the hand is mightier than the bush”.
I’m sure Thomas Jefferson’s Administration left some notes somewhere concerning how they accomplished that act.
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