Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Pirates attack the wrong ship

Somali pirates attacked an American ship with a crew of 20. I think this may have been the first American ship attacked and boarded by pirates. The Americans fought--the report says with "brute force"--back and won. But, the pirates chased for five hours, caught up, and boarded again; and were fought back again. The details are sketchy, but this is worth paying attention to. Americans fighting back. This will have consequences. I like it. 

Addendum: Here is FOX News coverage and the BBC’s. Apparently, the American captain is still being held hostage.

Discussions - 7 Comments

Ever since these pirates began their operations, they have been avoiding American ships, and I think because they understand that Americans aren't the "give up and surrender" type and that as soon as our interests are endangered, we start paying much closer attention to things in a far more serious manner than just having a ship occasionally patrol the area. This is bad for the pirates.

Jefferson would be proud!

Who isn't proud? Still, they have to get that captain back.

This is an old problem for the new world order. I read a good book called the Barbary Wars I think about our first foriegn operation dealing with the barbary pirates around the turn of the 19th century. Sadly, first we tried to bribe then divide and counquer and finally used brute force to defeat that threat. The author spoke about it in terms of the threat from islam but I think it is way more applicable to the current pirate situation. The pirate thing has been going on for a while now though, so a reaction now is suspect. I have heard that some ships were even rigging their bows with a sort of electric fence it has gotten so bad.

Great news, but I'm not at all clear on why there will necessarily be "consequences" resulting from our guys fighting back.

There will be consequences because this is the first instance most historians know about of a ship sailing under the American flag being taken over by pirates in two centuries. That fact that the Americans fought back and actually managed to regain control of the vessel I think shows how we will (or at least ought to) respond to the pirate threat; by attacking an American vessel and this suddenly becoming more directly "our" problem than it has been, I think we shall be taking a much more active role in fighting back these pirates and eliminating the threat they present. U.S. public opinion will become much more violent towards them now that they have attack Americans.


Two other things operate against their favor. One, according to reports, the only reason they have the captain is through duplicity-- after the Americans took back the ship, they exchanged the pirate they took captive for the captured captain; the pirates, however, betrayed the deal and did not turn over the captain after getting their captured peer back. Second, the ship they attacked was full of food aid for Kenya from various Christian and secular charities that Americans donate to. This is going to be detrimental to their operations.


At least provided the Obama Administration allows the Navy to respond adequately.

Hah, from the Yahoo News article on the story:

Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Omaar said the pirates "cannot win" against American forces.
"The pirates are playing with fire and have got themselves into a situation where they have to extricate themselves because there is no way they can win," he told The Associated Press.

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