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No deterrent to pirates, U.S. commander says
Guess who, Pappy! :-)I turned in my papers and like you said they made me a three-star armchair admiral. I'm to report to duty as soon as I finish my beer and figure out how to get the footrest folded back down. Piracy off the coast of Somalia can't be stopped until there is some authority to bring pirates to justice, according to the commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. A five-inch gun isn't enough authority? Because there is no working government in Somalia and no country is willing to take captured pirates, bring them to trial and detain them, there is no deterrent for pirates to stop attacking ships, Vice Admiral William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday. Sounds like an excuse. Somalia is a failed state. There is nothing there to call a state. Maybe some years ago. But not today. Time to take the reigns from the dead driver. "The problem is there's not a way to -- until we have a mechanism [to hold them] accountable and try them for their actions, there's no way to -- to finish the problem," Gortney said. Sooo it sounds like we're going to wait for the dead driver to miraculously spring back to life. Maybe in another 100 years after the West gets tired of Islam. The United States is making a deal with a country in the eastern Africa region to hold and try pirates captured by the U.S.-led Combined Task Force 151, a new maritime anti-piracy mission started earlier this month. Don't tell me. Some countries in the region are holding out for cash before they OK this? He said an official announcement would be made after the deal with the country is official. In the past three months, piracy attacks have averaged about 12 to 14 a month off the east coast of Africa. As of mid-January, the attack numbers are already at the average of the past three months, according to Gortney. "That [number] should tell you that we're not -- we're not being 100 percent successful on the deterrence of the attempt. And that's where we have to go after," Gortney said. The Indians dealt with one. The Russians dealt with one. And ship captains who saw them coming and hit the gas dealt with the rest. Hmm. Far from 100% if you ask me. The United States is expecting other nations to join the anti-piracy task force, but at the moment, the United States is the only country in the task force with just three ships off of the waters of Somalia. There are ships from some European and Asian countries patrolling the waters independently as well, primarily guarding cargo ships from their own countries. Pirates attacked nearly 100 vessels and hijacked as many as 40 in the waters off the coast of Somalia in 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Pirating off of Somalia has increased during the past four to five years as fishermen from Somalia realize that pirating is more lucrative than fishing. Additionally, pirates are able to get away with the crimes because of the lack of government and overall lawlessness in the country. What country? In name only. Doesn't count. It would be nice to have a new law, but I don't really think anyone is going to complain. Gortney said statistically the chances of ships being pirated off of Somalia less than one percent, but it won't be stopped until piracy is "disincentivized." One percent? That's quite a bit in my opinion. Imagine whether or not you'd let your kids drive if those were the odds of getting into an accident. But for all my bravado, I realize it's tough when you follow the rules. But sometimes, the situation defies the rules. There should be rules in place for situations like this, even if they are on the a$$-end of the world. It's happened before, and until someone puts a bit of effort into coming up with some kind of rules to deal with it, it will continue to happen over and over until someone does. It's like the entire NYPD can't take down some 10-year old bully because they can't find the bully's mom. Somalia is a failed state. There is no authority there whatsoever. The rules do not fit the situation. There is nobody there to give a $hit, let alone take care of lawbreakers. Suppose some kid's mom doesn't discipline their kid and they get out of hand. There are legal means to deal with it and keep others "disincentivezed" from copying the kid's behavior. This is the same thing, just on a bigger scale. And even if the kid's mom gets mad and jumps up and down in the police station and threatens to sue the police because she's too proud to admit she's lost control, why should the police care any more than governments who are trying to put down pirates? It's all just hot air and we all know it. The fact is, until the mom and the Somalian government get it back together, everyone has to step in for them and maintain order. And this principle should apply everywhere else in the world, too. Unless the failed state has nukes, of course. Posted by: gorb 2009-01-16 |
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