Posted on 04/14/2009 3:53:13 AM PDT by Scanian
Captain Richard Phillips was saved Sunday by an old-fashioned formula that pirates understand — Attack U.S. shipping, and you will die. Now that policy needs to be extended to the pirates' sanctuaries on land.
The Navy's bold actions were in sharp contrast to the instinctive waffling of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who promised that the Obama administration was seeking “an appropriate 21st-century response” to the pirates who seized a U.S.-flagged vessel and took its American captain hostage.
Thankfully, Vice Admiral William E. Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, gets it. He made it clear that “The United States government's policy is to not negotiate.” Such a clear statement of resolve was a refreshing change from President Obama's usual “let's talk about it” approach. Mr. Obama has said that the United States is “resolved to halt the rise of piracy in that region,” and the Defense Department reportedly is discussing ways to take the fight directly to the pirate safe havens. During his press conference on Easter Sunday, Adm. Gortney said matter-of-factly what that means: “The ultimate solution for piracy is on land.” Taking the offensive is the only remedy to the piracy disease, and there is ample precedent for such operations.
In 1851, the Navy sent the U.S. sloop-of-war Dale to Johanna Island, a pirate haven off the coast of Madagascar, in response to the seizure of Capt. Moore of the bark Maria by local strongman Sultan Abdullah bin Salim. The Dale's commander, Capt. Pearson, rejected any notion of ransom for Moore and instead demanded $20,000 from the pirates for our trouble, or he would open fire. In the ensuing negotiations, the sultan was willing only to give $5,000, most of which would be paid in trinkets, cattle and cotton cloth because of lack of cash
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I’ll be surprised if it happens. I’m already hearing lefties go on about the poor, abused pirates, they’re just kids, they’re forced into this work, they have a legitimate grievance, etc etc. The usual nauseating stuff.
While we need to take out their sanctuaries on land, before we do so, we need to take out the mother ships that are launching the small boats out at sea. We should simply sink them and not stop to pick up survivors. Let the sharks have them. Then we should use standoff weapons to take out the villages—yes, the entire villages—full of pirates.
LLS
If I hear one more socialist talk about the pirates being inexperienced teenagers, I will puke.
I really don’t care if the pirates are 70 or 7. I just want pirates and their families dead and their homes and villages destroyed.
This is absolutely the only form of persuasion that is understood and it works.
I wonder if one could make any money selling American flags to foreign shipping companies.
I'd be disappointed if it did. Virtually all the ships being captured and hostages being taken and not from U.S. flagged vessels. And all the ransom being paid is being paid by other countries. Let them do it. We do not need another land campaign in the area.
I do believe that Hussein made it clear that we would. - Were not those FBI men negotiators?
Why do we not?
You cannot argue that pirates are not “a common enemy of mankind,” nor can you argue that we should turn our face away from this type of festering boil on the butt of humanity.
We did that in Afghanistan for a decade and we know exactly how that turned out.
Destroying the land and sea infrastructure of this trash would take about 1 day by air.
Then let the rest of mankind take care of them. Why should we spend billions of dollars and who knows how many lives eradicating a problem that mainly festers for other countries?
Destroying the land and sea infrastructure of this trash would take about 1 day by air.
And not much longer to rebuild. Unless you destroy it and leave some control in place to keep it from reappearing then you's swatting at gnats with sledge hammers.
Making matters more complicated is that the insular Somalis tend to be resentful of political meddling and military action in their affairs, a Catch-22 that the U.S. forces encountered in the early 1990s with disastrous effect.
Well, there's not much I can say with this logic. Since we know that the Somalis are going to be resentful, we should choose the appeasement option. What's another 9 or 10 million welfare recipients in the grand scheme of things?
Since their entire GDP is only 5 billion or so, and 10 percent of them are already living here, let's just give them a package deal and be done with it. /sarc off
The USN will put Obama ashore so he can go and bow to the pirate king
“Attack U.S. shipping, and you will die.” I like it!
Pay us for coming here and wasting time on scum? I love it!
I'm certainly no fan of Hillary, but this may have been just garden variety stalling chatter. The call as to when/if to pull the trigger wasn't hers to make, and for whatever reason it wasn't being made right away. In the meantime, encouraging the pirates to think they had a basically unlimited amount of time to "negotiate" wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If Hillary was asking "What are we going to do? What am I supposed to say?", she may very well have been getting the response "Just stall."
I ask a very liberal acquaintance yesterday if being killed by an "inexperienced teenager" made you any more or less dead.
Remind me again if you please. How much rebuilding can dead people do?
TIA.
Not as much as the ones you miss can.
So don't miss. And if by chance you do repeat the cluster bombing as often as necessary.
500 lb bombs are cheap.
Once we've reduced those 'pirate villages' to ashes the rest of them will learn that qhat farming is more profitable and far less lethal.
L
Obama may be evil but he is not stupid. Now that the public, moved by the media to believe that He is different from Carter and Clinton on international affairs and national defense, he may indeed risk some bombarding of the areas where the pirates embark from.
Unless I see video to the contrary, my suspicion is that the sequence of events went something like this:
Commander to snipers: “Obama gave the green light to use force if the Captain’s life is in imminent danger. Isn’t that a rifle being pointed at the Cap’n right now? Looks like imminent danger to me. Synchronize your shots and let ‘em have it.”
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