The Pirates of Somalia
In my youth, the word “pirate” had become somewhat of a joke, with overtones of operetta (“The Pirates of Penzance”) crossed with Disney’s version of Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) and Halloween costumes featuring funny hats and eyepatches.
Lately, of course, the joke’s been on us and the rest of the Western world—and it’s not a funny one. Piracy has become the profession for go-getters in the anarchic failed nation of Somalia. There is essentially no effective central government within Somalia to stop them or the terrorist elements that find a home there. And, as we’ve learned so many times before, the local problems of failed nations can tend to metastasize.
It is highly ironic, but not really all that contradictory, that the Maersk Alabama was on its way to deliver food aid for the people of Uganda and Somalia when it was boarded by the Somalian pirates. Failed nations are failed nations, and they fail in a number of ways all at once—including the failure to feed their people.
The scope of the problem makes possible remedies more complex. The simplest one would be for shipping companies to permit the captains (and perhaps selected crew members) of the vessels at risk to bear arms for self-defense:
[L]awyers [advising the companies] 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.
Here’s another good idea, if the international community could ever get its act together long enough to implement it:
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.
The situation in Somalia itself is a much knottier problem. Is the world—or the US, which is what these things often boil down to—ready to take on the rebuilding of another failed and chaotic nation, especially one that seems to have little strategic importance? Very doubtful. And, since these pirates don’t tend to sit together around campfires singing “Yo heave ho and a bottle of rum,” surgical strikes would be unlikely to be all that surgical.
International community needs a better community organizer to get things rolling. BO has lost a chance to strut his pecs… again.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/obama-apology-to-pirates-rebuked/
You’d think it was the Cuban Missile Crisis. All Obama had to do was do the obvious, which he apparently did. I’ll be impressed if he destroys the piracy altogether.
The problem here is we have the leaders of western nations acting as if the pirates are conducting themselves in western modes of behaviour.
Ain’t that a hoot!
Best strategy:
1. Take a page out of the Royal Navy’s history book and begin summarily executing any pirate caught on the high seas. Make the price of piracy, if caught, very high indeed.
2. Take another page out of the Royal Navy’s history book, and completely level all piracy strongholds, villages and bases. Leave them nowhere to go to hide and make aiding and abetting them a dead end (pun intended!) path for any village thinking of lending the pirates a hand.
3. Arm all civilian shipping passing through the area. Employment of armed civilian contractors (aka, Blackwater type companies) on the ship for security purposes would go a long way towards making the price of piracy too high for any pirate thinking of a climb over the transom, but even arming the regular crew and giving them rudimentary training would help. After all, pirates by nature seem to be cowardly, and deliberately prey on weaker targets – and you have noticed they haven’t tried to capture a US warship, right?
4. Give local US ship commanders extreme latitude in dealing with the piracy situation – and I think you’ll find the mess cleaned up in short order.
I’d be curious to know at what point and by what arguments has the legal profession acquiesced to momentum to distance itself from natural law and natural rights thinking.
All along this problem of the Muslim pirates has been kicked around by Washington lawyers and international lawyers. They set the rules and interpret them, and then our DoD follows their cues. The merchant marine is almost totally disarmed – which is a condition which the powerful elites here and abroad would like the American people to be.
The way the lawyers see this problem and the way they reason about it is exactly opposite of how most ordinary think about it. You see, most of us ordinary folks believe we have a natural right to defend ourselves against marauders, thieves, brigands, and even tyrannical governments. Our commonsense solutions are to arm ourselves. So, we are inclined to take the view that merchantmen on the high seas should be allowed to arm ourselves. We believe, when possible, our naval forces should also intervene and deal death to the maritime marauders, even to the point of raiding and destroying their bases of operation on land and on the sea.
But the lawyers and politicians see this problem from an entirely different calculus. They want to pay the marauders off. In fact, they insist that insurance for shipping vessels and cargo make provisions for this eventuality, even to the point of paying ransom for captives.
In other words, pay the jizya.
The Muslim pirates are only doing what the prophet set the example for, when he went to Medina with his small, merry band and then told them that Allah said they could raid the caravans. From that point on, brigandage was the way forward and it reversed Muhammad’s fortunes. He became very rich and he increased the numbers of men who came over to his cult of Allah. They also took hostages and demanded payment for their release. The pattern was put out there for anyone to imitate. Brigandage is actually an approved tactic of jihad for Muslims. Brigandage was an ancient practice in Arabia and elsewhere, but at least pirates and brigands did not invoke the will of the gods to justify their activities.
When they broke out of Arabia, usually the first wave of jihad was the razzia (raid). It was intended to accomplish two things: loot and terrorize the kafir. Next, the demand for protection payment (ransom) came on the heels of razzias. Eventually, the jizya payment for staying the hand of war exhausted its purpose, and the Arab armies followed to mop up the target society.
But even with the evidence of history replete with these lessons, the legal profession still insists on paying the jizya. The people (most of them, anyway) do not want to pay the jizya. They prefer to give the enemy the cold, hard steel.
I made a mistake in my above comment, which is why it would be nice to have an edit function.
“So, we are inclined to take the view that merchantmen on the high seas should be allowed to arm ourselves.”
Should read: to arm themselves
Addition: John Adams believed we should continue to pay the jizya. Thomas Jefferson, armed with the knowledge of the Qur’an and the history of jihad waged against the West, was against paying the jizya. He wanted to give them the mailed fist.
I know that there are laws in certain countries about coming into port with weapons, but what is the problem with hiring private companies to man small ships that would wait off shore and escort the ships through the dangerous waters. Hell get some of those guys off “The deadliest catch”. Escorting ships and fighting off pirates would seem like a cakewalk.
While the Royal Navy was harsh on piracy in general in the past, they also did very little against the Barbary pirates, and paid tribute (jizya) to them as a matter of course. Perhaps Europeans, having been fighting Islamic expansion for over a thousand years at that point, were weary.
Surprisingly, the phrase “millions for defense, not one cent for tribute” was first invoked against our first ally, the French, during the first Adams administration, in what was called the “X,Y,Z affair”. It led to two years of undeclared naval war with France from 1798-1800, and the creation of the Department of the Navy. When pirate seizings increased, the sentiment continued.
Hopefully, we won’t have to reduce pirate strongholds this time. Today, the people of these towns and cities are just as much hostage as those the pirates kidnap.
“Today, the people of these towns and cities are just as much hostage as those the pirates kidnap.”
How is this so? Said towns and cities economically benefit from the brigandage. They are Muslim and they understand that this sort of thing is normal and expected. The prophet, after all, set the model and he is considered The Perfect Man who should be imitated in all things.
It’s a little like saying all of Chicago or Las Vegas is guilty because they benefit economically from the mob. Most muslims go along to live. If given an informed choice, and no gun against their or their families’ heads, most would reject Islam.
Ernst Renan said it best: “Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times in my travels I have observed that a small group of fanatics maintain others in the practice of this religion by terror. To free the muslim from his religion is the best service one can render him.”
We freed Germans (the first victims) from Nazism.
Thank you, Lee, for the valid point. But we still did visit collective punishment against the Germans and the Japanese. I am sure there were plenty of them who were against National Socialism or Japanese imperialism.
One of the cruel aspects of life is that there are innocent people who do live within corrupt civilizations.
FredHjr,
I just hope it doesn’t have to come to that. Unfortunately, it probably will. Even more unfortunate, we may not have the will to do so this time, and much of the world will suffer because of it.
By the way, the reference to Renan is probably a paraphrase off the top of my head, as opposed to an actual “quote”, but it is close enough.
Lee,
Likewise, there were far more “partisans” who conducted guerilla warfare against German occupiers in WWII *AFTER* being liberated than could have been found on the ground prior to liberation.
Large elements of society simply go along with the powers that be because it benefits them.
Only when those who benefit from piracy pay a high price along with the pirates themselves will said villages turn against the practice.
Scottie,
Ever read or see the movie “Catch 22”?
Capt. Nately: Don’t you have any principles?
Old man in whorehouse: Of course not!
Capt. Nately: No morality?
Old man in whorehouse: I’m a very moral man, and Italy is a very moral country. That’s why we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.
Capt. Nately: You talk like a madman.
Old man in whorehouse: But I live like a sane one. I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top. Now that he has been deposed, I am anti-fascist. When the Germans were here, I was fanatically pro-German. Now I’m fanatically pro-American. You’ll find no more loyal partisan in all of Italy than myself.
Capt. Nately: You’re a shameful opportunist! What you don’t understand is that it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Old man in whorehouse: You have it backwards. It’s better to live on your feet than to die on your knees. I know.
Capt. Nately: How do you know?
Old man in whorehouse: Because I am 107-years-old. How old are you?
Capt. Nately: I’ll be 20 in January.
Old man in whorehouse: If you live.
By the way, certain merchant ships transiting the Gulf of Aden are armed.
The U.S. puts an armed contingent on contract charter merchants carrying high value material to Iraq and the Persian Gulf. My understanding is that they board the ship prior to entering the danger zone and then debark when clear.
I do not know if the defensive contingent is military or civilian contractors.
While the Royal Navy was harsh on piracy in general in the past, they also did very little against the Barbary pirates
No, they eventually put an end to the Barbary pirates. And the establishment of French conrol made sure it didn’t re-emerge. If you’re noting that they paid them in the early 1800s, you’d be right.
The Empire had bigger fish to fry, in the form of Napoleon. If Lord Nelson had a free hand and spare time, he would have reduced Tripoli to ashes.
Some things are so simple and straightforward we cannot expect a person with “trans-nationalist” sympathies to understand them.
As my dear (Jacksonian) grandfather might have said, “Pirates have one need that transcends all others: They need to be killed.”
Even the Disney pirate version of Long John Silver understood that was the risk he was running in plying his trade.
Jamie Irons
FredHjr Says:
“How is this so?”
I don’t know if it is the case, but if they won’t let you leave… or they’ve moved into your town / house / property and won’t leave (but is too valuable for you to walk away from and/or you need it to survive as it has your support system* built in) that would make the guy’s statement factual.
* re: well water, shelter, food stocks for whole seasons, et cetera…
“If you’re noting that they paid them in the early 1800s, you’d be right.”
Yes, I am referring to the late 18th, early 19th century period when it was becoming a foreign policy interest of America’s.
Of course! It’s so obvious that it’s all a plot of those evil Joooos!
http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/16190
What were we thinking?
“What is happening in strategic Horn of Africa is not a simple case of piracy. The pirates believed to be numbering 1200 former fishermen and coast guards, mostly from Somalia prey on a key maritime route leading to Suez Canal. They are getting bolder, wilier and richer. It raises many questions about the capabilities and equipment of outlaws operating in deep sea, numbering not more than 1200, who are seeking ransom. Massive ransoms have brought rapid development to former fishing villages off Somalia coast. Estimates are that over $150 million booty has been collected by the pirates till end 2008 and many among them own beachside hotels. There is something more than what the eye could see. Analysts are openly accusing Israel of sponsoring piracy off Somalia waters with the aim of transforming Red Sea into a Jewish lake. The immediate objective of USA, Israel and European countries is to prevent the inflow of arms to Islamist Al-Shabab that is on the verge of snatching power in Somalia and to steal Arab oil. Sea piracy has been blown up into a big threat to oil supplies to the west, Japan, China and others in order to internationalize the issue. Internationalization of security in Red Sea is being done under the pretext of fighting piracy to safeguard critical seal lanes and choke point of Suez Canal with the help of a combined multi-national naval force.”
From article linked above.
“… Conversion of Red Sea into Jewish lake would allow USA domination of almost whole of Asia, Middle East and Africa….”
Horseshit…
Back in the day, in Texas we had a defense called “He needed killin’.” This defense applied to cases of aggravated rape, child murder such as The Man Who Killed Halloween by putting cyanide in his own kids’ Pixie Straws, and so forth. I would put piracy in the same category. They need killin’. No matter the race, color or creed, the only good pirate is a dead pirate.
Why yes, I am a sailor and a reader of naval history. On a boat, piracy and fire are existential threats. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. If it’s pirates versus Americans, I’m for giving the Americans what they need to defend themselves and American interests.
I’m with Oh, bother. Some people need killin’. Some of ’em are outside the country.
“The simplest one would be for shipping companies to permit the captains (and perhaps selected crew members) of the vessels at risk to bear arms for self-defense:
Well…ok. But the shipping companies aren’t screaming for this to be done, are they? They’re not because right now the cost of paying off the pirates is relatively low, and can be passed on to the customer. Only when it affects their bottom line will they demand action.
I’d more favor putting private security guards on the ships, armed with .50 cal guns. The merchant crews aren’t trained and may hesitate at the critical moment.
Some folks got to die. That’s the President’s job: to decide who needs to die. Pirates – and anyone who even remotely may be involved with piracy – are a great place to start.
Trouble with arming the ships is that they go to a lot of ports. If a sailor killed a pirate he could find himself charged with murder by some idiot prosecutor trying to get his name in the paper or with a grudge against Americans and then he might get snatched by Interpol the next time he sailed into the harbor.
Unarmed vessels and a high payoff when you succeed. What’s not to like for a pirate?
All that’s missing is a sign saying “Come plunder us”.
It would be wise for someone to do something different very soon. The pirates are likely to modify their behavior — the first thing that comes to mind is strapping bombs to hostages or something along that line which would have made this last rescue more difficult.
Interesting problem in asymmetrical economics. For the shippers, it is cheaper and safer to pay and not resist. For the pirates, it is highly lucrative, and given the incentives of the shippers, not very dangerous. Sounds like a recipe for more piracy, until the pirates get too greedy and start taking too much squeeze.
A matter of nice judgment, as the Fat Man said in The Maltese Falcon.
Oblio,
So, in essence, all of the governments and shipping companies have decided to appease and kick the can down the road.
Does that mean that they are actually being allowed to have this “successful business model” as a backdoor way to get money into Somalia for economic development? That’s the cynic in me responding.
Another side of me considers lawyers to be craven appeasers who, if they cannot fight with words successfully, will not fight at all.
I wonder how much cargo and capital is put at risk in Somali piracy compared to land based cargo piracy right here in the US.
May very well be the same skewing of reality we see when 3 persons die in a Cessna crash makes national news, but 6 people dead in a minivan doesn’t even register.
Fred, I’m not that cynical. It’s just what happens according to the fundamental economics of risk and return. John Keegan says that piracy is as old as trade, and trade is as old as civilization. I can remember talking once with a guy in charge of security for HP ink cartridge distribution in South Africa; he was playing a constant cat-and mouse game against hijackers for whom the value of a single truckload represented wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. I talked with a fellow in Jakarta who had trouble with pirates stealing his inventory from his warehouses and then competing against him in the market with lowball offers: why not, if your cost of goods sold is effectively zero?
I would say the dynamic is persistent, but not stable.
If I had to bet, there will be a lot of talk, and the Administration will vow to take action in conjunction with our allies. There might be an international gabfest. After awhile, nothing will have happened and the media will get bored. At that point, the Administration will forget all about it.
From two different posts:
“Hopefully, we won’t have to reduce pirate strongholds this time.”
“I just hope it doesn’t have to come to that. ”
Too late for that. It is just a matter of do we realize this before or after we could affect a solution.
For whatever reason since Vietnam the idea of “escalation” has been the norm in warfare. It has never worked and it will never work. All it does is both prolong the bloodshed *and* increase what it takes to finish it. After all if they survived 10 units of death they can survive 11 – we can then extrapolate that if they can survive N units they can survive N+1 units. However if You go from 1 to 7 it normally causes things to end.
I think what causes this is that the mindset of these people is so foreign to many that they do not believe it to be the case (some may “believe” in that they do not disagree with it, but they do not really Believe and refuse to act on it). For 99% of the conflicts out there talking things out does just fine. In fact I would say for most of the first world 99.999% of the conflicts work out that way. The few times I’ve seen the conflicts move past that point you can almost clearly see when the victim understands (almost always too late) that this is not so.
Even for those of us that *do* understand this we are so conditioned against violence (and I’m including personal conflicts along with violence == fists) that we flinch from it when we shouldn’t. I know I’ve had a few conflicts end up … badly where if I had pushed instead of acquiesced it would have ended with little done on either side. I truly believed and knew what was coming yet I couldn’t break that conditioning – even now it is hard.
We had the chance to stop all this before it really got started and we gave in. Now it is too entrenched and is going to require bloodshed. There are a number of conflicts out there in the same boat. For many of them we are still in a place where we could minimize it, but alas we are going to talk and give in until they get powerful enough that we have no choice. Even then I think (as we are with militant Islam) we will wait a bit more just to make sure and hope it somehow goes away when they figure out we are nice guys.
So what’s up with the majority of Africa, anyway?
Honestly……..
The Maersk Alabama is a US-flagged cargo ship that was en route to Kenya. The Maersk line has a lot of Defense Department contracts. DOD stuff must, by law, be carried on US-flagged ships. The cargo on the Maersk Alabama was probably military or foreign aid. What was it?
The US is ‘interceding’ in the current Kenyan crisis, where members of Obama’s tribe are in a violent political contest.
Was the piracy a coincidence, or an attempt to influence the outcome in Kenya?
Lee,
You do realize that Catch-22 is a Hollywood movie, right?
On the other hand, I was referring to comments made by informed observers of post-occupied France, and was referring to something that really happened.
Yes, there will be times when a father, for instance, will bow down to another as that’s the only way to protect his family. This could very well be the case for some people in this area.
But it’s a slack man indeed who, after surviving such an encounter, takes no action other than to plan to bow down again the next time such an event occurs.
What such a mindset fails to realize is that each act of subserviance only encourages the aggressor to more and greater acts of aggression.
You can extrapolate that up to the level of shipping companies paying off pirates rather than fighting back against them.
Yes, the father must survive and protect his family, but in the long term he’d be better off trying to figure out how to get his family out of such a dangerous area – or how to eliminate the threat.
For the most part, that doesn’t seem to be the case in this instance, where as another has noted some of these *pirates* actually now own hotels!
Entire villages are being supported by these acts of piracy – the real benefits they derive from this activity undermining any argument that the locals are just going along to survive.
As I see it, there are 3 principal actions that once taken would eliminate piracy in the area for the time being.
1. Raze the ports and villages along the coast to the ground in order to destroy their ability to launch ships, supply ships, and repair/maintain ships.
2. Legally try and execute captured pirates by the Navy officers that obtained them, provide Navy crews a bonus for any captured pirate ransom or salvage, and do not turn over pirates to anyone who would either just keep them in jail (to be exchanged later, ala in Germany) or immediately released (Yemen).
3. Obtain Q-ships and stock them with Marine platoons, heavy weapons, and anti-armor disposables. Current pirate ships do not have a warship capacity, so the ships themselves need not be armed, secretly or openly.
Neo, the primary complaint I have heard is that the insurance rates skyrocket (past the risk of multi million ransoms) once the crews are armed. Why does the insurance skyrocket? That’s the real question. Who decides when and where to increase insurance rates for these companies?
Again, q-ships would resolve this issue as they would be commanded by US Navy officers, not civilians. Thus no “insurance” would be at play.
The merchant marine companies are merchants at heart, thus their behavior depends upon monetary risks and profits. Same as pirates.
I’m for making the term “pirates” itself walk the plank. Through no fault of its own– it is, afterall, a completely legit and accurate term– it has accrued (as neoneocon points out) a Disney/operetta/boys’-adventure tenor that totally blunts its true current meaning: Islamoterrorists at Sea. It’s sort of like referring to a guard at Auschwitz as a “Polish jailer,” rather than the much more correct term of “Nazi.”
“You do realize that Catch-22 is a Hollywood movie, right?”
Gee, really? I didn’t realize when I referenced a novel made into a movie that I was actually quoting lines from a “real” movie. In fact, don’t the lines actually articulate the point you were making? It was eloquent and to the point.
You seem to be arguing with someone who agrees with you.
Well observed Zack R, and this is part and parcel of the larger phenomena of white washing the international islamist movement, in general. In concert with it, our pretend POTUS and his loyal Obamatoads are orchestrating a P.R. campaign suggesting that islamic culture, generally, has had a positive role and place in American history and culture which it most certainly has not, not remotely. “To the shores of Tripoli” is hardly an affectionate reference. Islamic culture in America, for the most part, is only pro-American, loyal, and “moderate” to the extent that it discerns America as acquiescent of Sharia creep; As well with the deliberate downgrading of Israel’s status as an established and significant ally, on par with, ie., Saudi Arabia. In the conflict with Saddam over Kuwait, and for which Iraq had long made territorial claims grounded in their interpretation of their history, neither America nor the international community ever considered bargaining with “land for peace”, etc. notions. By the same token, the Kurds have never received the respect which they deserved from the rest of the moslem world. Obama is only going to protect America’s longstanding interests to the extent that he is made to by the people he is forced to work with on a personal basis, if only for politically expediant reasons. Obama and his wrecking crew is certainly working far harder to take the guns away from Americans, than from islamist pirates…
On the other hand, it’s easy to make speculations of how we would not be so “slack” in the same situation, considering this society give most of us a luxury of mobility and protection from perpetrators such as these.
Oldflyer says:
“The U.S. puts an armed contingent on contract charter merchants carrying high value material to Iraq and the Persian Gulf. My understanding is that they board the ship prior to entering the danger zone and then debark when clear.
I do not know if the defensive contingent is military or civilian contractors.”
In fact, the contingent is military, specifically the U.S. Navy. My son, previously Military Police, is presently stationed in Bahrain and is serving on a roving security team to do just what you have described. They board the ships in various ports and transit the Gulf of Aden going sometimes as far as the Med. They maintain 24-hour watch (12 on and 12 off) at the rails of the ship and are armed with .50 caliber and more. In some cases, these teams are at sea for weeks, and sometimes months, at a time.
“If I had to bet, there will be a lot of talk, and the Administration will vow to take action in conjunction with our allies. There might be an international gabfest. After awhile, nothing will have happened and the media will get bored. At that point, the Administration will forget all about it.”
–Yup. Nothing will come of this. They (the gubmint types) only flap their gums when we’re looking at them; as soon as we look away, they go back to chewing their cud and swatting flies.
Lee,
No argument, just disagreement. I believe you misinterpret what I said.
My point is that claims the locals are living with the pirates because they don’t have the power to change the situation fail when one takes into account how entire villages are profiting from the piracy trade.
The movie Catch-22, which is what I assumed you were referring to and not the book based upon how you quoted a script and not a novel, on the other hand to me seems to be all about actions not really mattering in the larger scheme of things.
You’re screwed no matter what you do, hence the pop culture reference “catch-22” meaning a situation where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
I’m sure there are more cultured minds here than my own who will probably leap in to correct me as to the *real interpretation* and *underlying message* of the movie, but that’s the message I ended up with after watching the flick.
I don’t believe it really applies to the piracy situation because the villagers are obviously not *damned* as they enjoy the fruits of the piracy trade.
Contrary to popular sentiment, no navy and no nation is going to simply wipe out these villages – we must have a more *nuanced* and *proportionate* response to the acts of these obviously well meaning but disadvantaged folk.
End result, aid money will eventually go into the area (predominantly paid by the US taxpayer of course!), and the villagers will enjoy the benefits of the piracy trade first, and the benefits of incoming aid last with a generally freewheeling live-for-today existence in between.
There is no Catch-22 here for them, it’s all win-win from their perspective.
The conversation is in both the book and the movie.
When you posted “Likewise, there were far more “partisans” who conducted guerilla warfare against German occupiers in WWII *AFTER* being liberated than could have been found on the ground prior to liberation.”, it reminded me of the conversation from the book and movie. specifically the line “I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top. Now that he has been deposed, I am anti-fascist. When the Germans were here, I was fanatically pro-German. Now I’m fanatically pro-American. You’ll find no more loyal partisan in all of Italy than myself.” That’s all.
As for your assertion that the locals enjoy or prefer doing business with the pirates because they eek out a living by doing so is like saying the French enjoyed doing business with the occupying German forces. Some did for sure. Most had nowhere else to go and needed to make a living. One could do business with them, go homeless and hungry, or die.
Some joined the resistance. Many died until liberated. But they had a straw to grasp for. The Allies vowed to oust the Germans. Very few ( if any ) called for razing France to the ground for “collaborating” or “benefitting economically” from the occupation.
Lee,
Big problem with your comparison between Vichy France and modern Somalia.
France had been defeated by the Germans, it’s army destroyed (what part didn’t evacuate to England that is), forced to sign documents in the very rail car Germany had to sign it’s surrender documents in at the end of WWI, and a small but effective portion of it’s population was involved in resisting the German occupation by any means possible – whether it was helping shot down allied flyers back to England, assassinating German soldiers whenever the opportunity arose, hiding French Jews or even putting sugar into the gas tanks of German vehicles.
Resistance was enough that Germans had to occupy the country, and large portions of their military remained tied down in France instead of being shipped to other areas.
It is also true that there were many Frenchmen who were content to accept their lot under occupation who claimed to have been partisons after the war was over.
Not a lot of reason in that description to warrant “razing France to the ground” is there?
In Somolia, on the other hand, there is no evidence anyone is resisting the status quo, and evidence indicates that large segments of the population actually support the piracy trade.
Somolia also is not suffering under any kind of occupying army – it’s simply preying on vulnerable shipping businesses.
Huge differences there….
So, even though I can sympathize with with the viewpoint of destroying the pirate’s base of operations, I know it’s not going to happen because the Dear Leader doesn’t have the nerve to do so. The best that can be hoped for at this point is to catch them at sea and simply sink every pirate ship and execute every pirate that can be found.
“Somalia is also not suffering under any kind of occupying army..”
Al-Shabaab is said to have non-Somali foreigners in its ranks, particularly at its leadership[25]. Fighters from the Persian Gulf and international jihadists were called to join the holy war against the Somali government and its Ethiopian allies. Though Somali Islamists did not use suicide bombing tactics before, the foreign elements of Al-Shabaab are blamed for several suicide bombings.[26] [27] UN’s 2006 report stated Iran, Libya, Egypt and others in the Persian Gulf region as the main backers of the Islamists. Egypt has a longstanding policy of securing the Nile River flow by destabilizing Ethiopia. [28][29] Similarly, recent media reports also cited Egyptian and Arab jihadists as the core elements of the Al-Shabaab, who are training Somalis in sophisticated weaponry and suicide bombing techniques.[30] A few young Somali men who have immigrated with their families to the United States have also reportedly been recruited to fight in Somalia.[31]
From Wikipedia.
The only “huge” difference I see is your sympathies for one group of victims over another.
Lee,
While Al-Shabaab may and probably does have foreign fighters in it’s ranks – it’s still a home grown organization and not an occupying foreign army.
Huge difference between them and the n%%is.
Regarding foreign interference in the internal politics of nations, this is as old as human society and has always been taking place. Even the founding of the US contained elements of French “meddling” in North American affairs simply to cause the British problems.
So yeah, I do have “sympathies” as you put it, for one group over another. One group definitely fought against an identifiable foreign invader against overwhelming odds – and the other, well, they just seem to want to make a profit off of their own homegrown piracy organization.
But hey, if you want to stand in “sympathy” with the pirates, be my guest.
Scottie,
And you are just as welcome to call people trying to live under less than ideal circumstances beyond their control as “pirates”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_Charlemagne_(1st_French)
I guess occupation suited many French quite nicely. The “big difference” between France and Somalia narrows.
The simplest one would be for shipping companies to permit the captains (and perhaps selected crew members) of the vessels at risk to bear arms for self-defense:
So far the piracy has been comparatively non-violent: offhand I can’t think of anyone I know the pirates themselves have killed — although hostage rescuers have certainly killed several people. If the ships crews were to start using machine guns instead of water hoses, the pirates would presumably shoot more people too.
Piracy when the RN was wiping it out was generally much more violent than in the days when it was a safer occupation.
So a War-on-Piracy approach might well kill more seamen than it saved.
As for playing hunt-the-pirate — they have millions of square miles of ocean to operate in, and a couple of thousand miles of coastline to operate on. At any one time there must be thousands of small boats in that area to be searched. And as warships cost several hundred million dollars apiece, there will never be that many to do the searching.
And as the pirates are Somalis who steal from non-Somalis to the benefit of other Somalis, they probably don’t have that bad a press in Somalia. So they should have local support. Like Robin Hood.
I don’t think this would be an easy problem to solve.
OTOH, there does not seem to be that much effort to move through near-African waters in convoy, which suggests that for the moment it is quite a small problem. It may not need any more attention than, say, kidnappings of foreign businessmen in Mexico.