Piracy In The Age Of Obama
John Keegan on the need to start hunting down pirates. UK Telegraph:
… our campaign must be ruthless and pitiless: pirate ships must be sunk on sight and the crews left to swim to safety, if it can be reached.
Many would complain about such tactics but, in my opinion, pirates have no rights – indeed, it will be vital to exclude human rights lawyers from the anti-piracy campaign. To bring any captives to Europe or America for trial would probably be to grant them their dearest wish, which is to secure entry to a new life in the First World.
…
It is vital to begin re-equipping sooner, rather than later. Like the IRA, the pirates will not go away. Nor can they be negotiated out of the system. They needed to be hunted to extinction – and the time to start the hunt is now.
Good luck with keeping the human rights lawyers out of it, especially in the Age of Obama.
About hunting down pirates, the minute anyone has mentioned military intervention lately, everyone starts talking about “Black Hawk Down.” The problem is not so much combat. The responsible militaries of the world have a lot of recent experience with designing force to suit particular needs, but this problem doesn’t require subduing Mogadishu.
My own thoughts on this are similar to Keegan’s. Just sink the boats. Declare Somalia’s coast to be a no go for boats of any kind. Offshore or tied up at the dock. On trailers, on the beach. Send whatever airframes may be appropriate to the task … UAVs, helicopters, Warthogs, F-16s, whatever … and destroy every boat along the coast. Wait a day or two, repeat. Wait a week or two, repeat. Destroy any boat launch, repair, storage or harbor facilities as may exist while you’re at it. A few quick Marine shore parties, naval missile barrages and close-in naval raids may be helpful.
No boats, no piracy.
If that is considered too draconian, seeing as some people might actually be trying to fish, then there’s the more intensive, expensive, hazardous measure of patroling close to shore, and stopping every boat. Sink any with weapons on the spot and deposit those boatmen who don’t resist on shore. Kill the ones who do. Placing military teams on some merchant ships, or deploying decoy ships to ambush and kill pirates in the act might also be effective. Personally, I’d suggest another expedient from the Golden Age of Piracy. Gibbets. We had one at the entrance to Boston Harbor on a rock called Nix’s Mate, which is an aid to navigation these days as well as reportedly being cursed and bothered by strange wailing noises. (I camped on a harbor island adjacent a couple of years ago, didn’t hear anything but the jets screaming in overhead to Logan.)
The idea is, hang them and let them rot, where the others can see them. If opportunities to hang pirates at the entrance to harbors old-school are limited … and there’s that annoying lawyer/rights problem … then maybe the answer is to keep a few pirate bodies acquired in the above-mentioned operations. Drop from altitude into the middle of suspect villages and piracy bases.
Just a thought. It may sound a little too 18th century, but that is more or less the century in which Somalia dwells, on a good day. Decades of violent anarchy has left Somalia with little respect for anything but rule of arms. If we are to help Somalia enter the 21st century, it will take baby steps. Brutal baby steps.
Some people who might consider all this violence abhorrent, who might protest that the pirates are simply victims of dysfunctional society themselves, might suggest we engage in less distasteful methods to restore government, law and a legitimate economy to Somalia. But Somalia has proven highly resistant to this, so interim measures are needed to contain the lawlessness onshore. Obama can propose a big Somalia bailout down the road if he wants.
Insurance companies may prefer to pay ransoms and avoid the potential for violent escalation, but insurance companies aren’t footing the bill for the fleet that has to respond to these incidents. Their preferred approach has led to a dangerous escalation in the number of incidents. That has created a serious complicating factor. Literally hundreds of seamen currently being held, and may require a payout in advance of military operations. In any case, destroying boats on the beach and in the water is the best way to keep merchant crews and ships away from potentially hazardous confrontations.
About the need to fish, by the way, the sinking of boats and denial of both piracy and fishing operations may make some former fishermen think longingly of simpler times. They may also become interested in economic development and governance alternatives such as might be deemed appropriate, but if not, that’s their problem. And their wives, children and elderly grandparents’ problem.
Meanwhile, in pirate news:
AP: Italian-flagged US tugboat seized.
Times of London: details on Capt. Phillips’ escape attempt. (TOL Headline, “U.S. Navy misses chance,” reflects a lot of recent comment by people who don’t understand the Navy, due to pirate jumpiness, are compelled to stand off. Talk of snipers also fails to take into account distance, the boat’s cover, and wave motion. Sneaky SEAL assaults for some of the same reasons are likely to be only a last resort.)
Reuters: Pirates with German hostages in German ship return to shore after failing to find the standoff and their American-hostage-holding pals.
AP: Fourth Day. Philippine president … whose citizens comprise the largest number of approximately 240 hostages from about 15 seized ships now being held … wants hostage safety to take precedence over military responses. This complicating factor underscores the failure of current pirate-enablance policies. Maybe Obama, and all the nations involved, need to consider a big pirate bailout to get all hostages back in advance of above-mentioned piracy denial operations. I’d suggest the insurance companies foot that bill. It may want to be coordinated with a sneak preview of what is to come.
Back to the “Age of Obama” part. How likely is any practical solution that doesn’t involve human rights lawyers and an excess of concern for the well-being of the larger pirate community? Not very. The bailout part, more likely, though the big payout, if past is prologue, is more likely to come from us than insurance companies.
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary with some relevant thoughts on the “patient, non-military approach” of the Obama admin.
Welcome Instapundit, etal. Always so good to see you. Speaking of violent interventions, we’ve been revisiting the events of six years ago. Today’s glance back: Eat-Sleep-Need-Take-Kill-Die-Live. The Somali pirates would get it, they live there. Also, feel free to browse around Crittenden’s Boutique Right-Wing Warmonger Bookshop. Keegan section recommended.
Topics: crime, law & order
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:52 am Comments (29) on Saturday, April 11, 2009
29 Responses to “Piracy In The Age Of Obama”
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April 11th, 2009 at 10:24 am
[...] JULES CRITTENDEN AND JOHN KEEGAN on Piracy in the age of Obama. [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 11:19 am
It wouldn’t take more than one or two strikes on these hoodlums to divert their attention from American ships. Even a Reagan-like statement from Obama (Ha!) that they should release the prisoner or be wiped out in 24 hours, damn the casualties (including the heroic hostage). I don’t recall Russian or Chinese ships being messed with, presumably because they wouldn’t put up with it. Until Obama, they hadn’t the stones to take American ships either. So far, Obama has struck fear only into the hearts of capitalists.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Jules, on any given day there can be in the contested waters up to 6,000 boats of the type used by pirates. All but a tiny, tiny number really are fishing boats. It is simply impossible to stop and search all of them, nor even a fraction large enough to make the risk of stop high enough to overwhelm the potential gain of piracy.
Sink every boat in the waters? Did you really write that? More to the point – did you really mean it? I’ve read your work for a long time and I cannot believe you did mean it.
Sink any boat carrying weapons? As you’ve stated, Somalia & environs are lawless. In America, we’d say that weapons carriers are exercising their Constitutional right to bear arms, especially for self protection. Everyone is armed over there, not just pirates.
Decoy boats is not a bad idea – the old Q-Ship trick – but the pirates have a well-developed intel network in the ports of departures of ship plying the waters. They don’t just randomly pick a target ship and hijack it. For pirates to attack a Q-ship, we’d have to make them think it was a legitimate ship carrying carrying cargo valuable enough to be ransomed. Just sailing a disguised but armed merchant ship around the waters would not evoke an attack, I think. The vessel would have no provenance in the pirates’ information gathering operations.
It’s no good going after “mother ships,” since ordinary fishing boats routinely two smaller boats to fishing waters, then use them to lay out wide nets.
In short, there is nothing in pirates’ miodus operandi that distinguishes their boats from true fishing boats until the moment they commit the attack.
Announced exclusion zones around merchant vessels of, say, a half-kilometer, would probably be effective, but only if the merchantmen had armed contingents aboard with weapons to enforce it. Such teams could be found fairly easily (cough, Blackwater, cough) but the real question is one of will rather than capability. (This is Keegan’s point, too, of course.)
We have to compel a change of will on both sides – ours and the pirates’. We must make it more costly (financially) for shippers to continue with the status quo and more costly (financially and in lives) for the pirates to do so. So, institute a 100% tax on ransoms paid by shippers and insurance agencies while enabling 100% credits of costs of measures taken to prevent pirate attacks, such as the armed security detachments mentioned previously.
History’s successful campaigns against piracy, including the Brits’ in the 18th and 17th centuries, shows that land actions are the decisive ones. The pirate chieftains in the Horn live very large, with luxurious estates. Send in SOF teams to take them by force and strip intelligence from their contents, such as computers and records. Then the SOF teams leave, taking no one with them, and naval air levels the compounds.
Confirmed pirate vessels must be sunk where and when found without warning. Overseas banks accounts of pirates must be identified, seized and made forfeit.
Again, this issue is will, not ability. None of this – or any other solution – can be done to full effectiveness without the Euro nations buying in. They won’t do it, though. Best we can do is protect US-flag vessels (hopefully) and let the Euros go their own way.
But do we have the will? The American people do, but neither Obama nor his administration do.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Sorry I didn’t turn off italics in my prior content at the right point.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
[...] so. Jules Crittenden (h/t Instapundit) expands on Keegan’s sage advice. Declare Somalia’s coast to be a no go [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
[...] the pirates never touched an America vessel while Bush was president. Stupid Bush would have said, “just sink the pirate boats”, which would be the proper, efficient and meaningful response. Smart Obama can’t figure it [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I agree with Jules. Sink them all. Every boat. The time has past for moral equivelency, or of trying to reason with them. Just sink every frikken boat until the locals get tired of it and decide to do something to the pirates themselves.
Hell, it’s be cheaper to airdrop palettes of fish to them then allow them to put to sea and fish, knowing that pretty much every fishing boat is on the lookout for other prey.
Somalia is a lawless nation. Unless and until it’s people decide that they have had enough, and rise up to deal with the Islamic Courts, Pirates, AQ and every other low-life scum sucking bottom dwelling excuse for a mouth breathing life form, there is no reason to show mercy.
Keegan is correct, as he almost always is. Pirates are beyond the pale, and deserve no more mercy than a rabid dog.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Hi Don. That’s why option 2 is included, and why suggestions such as yours are also worth considering. All of them involve complications. I have no doubt the Navy could work out an effective program if given the green light, but it will require a willingness to kill pirates and sink boats. Necessary and practical to sink every boat? Maybe not. In fact, probably and hopefully not. Though that depends how quickly everyone else gets the message. Those 6,000 armed fishing boats may even be inspired to organize some kind of enforcement agency in the common interest. Almost like people who live in real countries do. I’m sure they know who is a pirate and who isn’t. Fishing, weaponry, having boats, a livelihood, that kind of thing are their problem, not ours.
The fundamental point, as you note, is the will to act decivisively … without hamstringing the effort with human rights lawyers, at which point everyone might as well go home.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
jules crittenden… another Rupert Murdock sockpuppet, Super-Duper Patriot, Keyboard Warrior that has, of course, NEVER SERVED.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
It’s a joke how you Chickenhawks want to spend billions on exotic weapons like the F-22 Raptor which are completely useless in today’s terrorist environment..
April 11th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
jules crittenden a Keyboard Warrior has NEVER SERVED.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
The author of this blog, of course has NEVER SERVED.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
You know, now that I think of it, I kind of like that idea of a Somali fishermen’s militia. Leaflet all the fishing villages from the air: “Get organized, bring this to an end or we will destroy all your boats.” Then start destroying boats until they get with the program.
Welcome davemartin7777. Never stop being irrelevant! (You’re absolutely right, by the way, davemartin7777. Never served. That’s why I couldn’t understand why they were all shooting at me, putting landmines in my way, all that. Maybe it was the Murdoch sockpuppetry.)
April 11th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
davemartin7777 ,,
I served. I have the DD-214 and the scars to prove it. I have the life membership card in the DAV. That, and $4.00 will get me a cup of Joe at the local Starbucks.
What’s your point? The F-22 is a damned fine system, and one that will be needed when the Chinese decide to take a swing at us. Believe me, that time is coming.
Our big problem with defense expenditure is that POTUS is sending the money we need to rebuild our systems to his buddies in the Unions and ACORN.
As to Pirates, yeah… sink every boat until they get the message. We are the adults on the planet, and we have a civilization to preserve, and we really don’t have time to allow some backwater 5th world borderline stone age tfibes to interfere with our going forward. Our civilization isn’t a welfare program for other nations that don’t have a clue.
Keep trolling, troll.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Gibbets? Excellent. I got yer bumpersticker right here matey!
“So many pirates. So few yardarms.”
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/enemies_foreign_domestic/free_bumperstic.php
April 11th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
One of the more delightful practices of our forebears, sadly frowned upon as barbaric these days. There’d be all kinds of hearings, congressional grandstanding, hardly worth it. “Who ordered the gibbeting … gibbeting violates blah blah blah … ” Hey, whatever happened to crucifixion? I know there are religious overtones …
April 11th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
You really don’t need to take out all boats. Fishermen could use canoes or rowboats 10′ or less. That would make raiding parties logistically quite difficult.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
That is a very humane suggestion, Cthulhu. I was going to suggest that we airdrop surf-fishng gear.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Jules,
You know, if the “lightworker” was truly interested in stimulating the economy, Maine could use some of that money. Send a shipload up here and use it to reopen the sardine factories. Then when we get production ramped up, we could send container ships full of kippers and sardines and other assorted rectal tockets to the Somalis so they wouldn’t HAVE to fish.. :)
Sort of a two-fer, eh?
April 11th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I suspect you’d find that most legitimate Somali fisherman don’t go much farther than 15-20 miles offshore, with the majority operating much closer. The pirates are operating much further out. So figuring out who’s a pirate and who’s a legitimate fisherman is not really that hard. The question is who is going to run the show, the “hand wringers”, or men/women of action. You’re in the middle of the ocean and you can only repel armed boarders with a fire hose? Because someone back at home office is afraid that you’ll hurt one of the pirates and they’ll sue?? If that’s how far our society is fallen things are even worse than they’ve looked recently.
April 11th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Prominant American says what he thinks of davemartin7777’s biting analysis./a>
April 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Most of the suggestions I’ve seen here sound pretty good (except for davemartin777 — inform us, dave, where and how did YOU serve, and was it in an actual combat role?). The most workable one is: hit the insurance companies in the wallet. Make them pay 100% tax on ransom payments, or make them liable for failure to protect the crews from unlawful seizure, whatever works. You’d start seeing arms and self-defense training for ships’ crews tout suite.
As for seeking protection from Obama et al: fuggedaboudit. Too many groups wailing about oppression of the poor black folks of the Sudan. And I’m just talking about Euroweenies.
I’m all for the protection of Sudanese fisherman. Except when they take up piracy, which a whole shipload of them have, considering the money payouts.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Oops. Somalia, not Sudan. Africa confuses me.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
I posted more thoughts about how to end Capt. Phillips’ordeal back on my own site, Sense of Events. It’s called, “Put Phillips and the pirates in the water.”
But in a kind and gentle way, you understand.
April 12th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Remind me never to say anything bad about Keegan’s books.
April 12th, 2009 at 9:08 am
davemartin7777:
And you did serve? I see/read no evidence of this. In point of fact, all I’ve read from you is a tinny little whine, reminiscent of a five year old, told by Mommy that he can’t have something.
Oh, for the record: Army, 1977-1983, CONUS, FRG, Grenada.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] of authority might like to think it is. There are 240 other captives of various nations. Needs a program. Meanwhile, those Somali elders the Americans were negotiating with might want the bodies of their [...]
April 12th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
“The author of this blog, of course has NEVER SERVED.”
True. I read Critt’s stuff all the time, and not once has he served me a cold beer.
That’s what I call ingratitude.
Meanwhile…President Obama opened a can of whupass on the pirates, rescued the the hostage, and killed three of the pirates, and captured the fourth.
Nice job, President Obama, way to go USN.
April 13th, 2009 at 1:02 am
[...] take before any pirates got themselves [...]