Navy SEALs 3; pirates 0

[unixronin]

Captain Phillips is coming home.  The pirates who attacked his ship ... not so much.

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) -- An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, the ship’s owner said.

[...]

“The negotiations between the elders and American officials have broken down.  The reason is American officials wanted to arrest the pirates in Puntland and elders refused the arrest of the pirates,” said the commissioner, Abdi Aziz Aw Yusuf.  He said he organized initial contacts between the elders and the Americans.

Two other Somalis, one involved in the negotiations and another in contact with the pirates, also said the talks collapsed because of the U.S. insistence that the pirates be arrested and brought to justice.

We get that you didn’t want your pirates arrested.  OK, we didn’t arrest them.  Let us know how “dead” is working out for you instead.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I found some remarks of mostly–innocent civilians on the Horn of Africa to be the most instructive. People are terrified that if the pirates take vengeance on civilians, that Western nations will come and pound the living shit out of their homes.

I know at least one person who has already espoused simply arclighting every Somali port. I have to wonder myself what the psychological effect would be of picking an empty, unused patch of land ten miles outside of some pirate-frequented port and thoroughly ploughing it from fifty thousand feet, just as a demonstration of what could have been done.

My favorite line from the Iron Man movie comes to mind, too:

They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it, that’s how America does it… and it’s worked out pretty well so far.

I think there's a lot to be said for that viewpoint. Both because it means it's a weapon you actually dare use, and because it lets everyone know that you are prepared to use it if necessary. There's limited point in carrying Teddy Roosevelt's big stick if you're not prepared to smack somebody in the head with it when the need arises.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I know at least one person who has already espoused simply arclighting every Somali port.

I'm really opposed to the "God will know his own" approach. As, you'd think, so would be everyone who was offended by the downing of the WTC on 11 September.

*shrug*

What can I say. I'm just a big ol' softie for innocents.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think it's a tenable approach myself. Just sayin'.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Americans have always been particularly willing to apply a cranial persuader. We are also pretty picky about making sure it is only applied to those who deserve it.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine argues that this is why we were morally obligated to nuke the Japanese twice and not just once. If our goal was to force the Japanese surrender by the use of atomic weapons — if we stipulate that goal is moral — then a double bombing is, in ghodamus’s mind, a moral imperative.

Because if we only did it once, they might not have thought we’d have the balls to do it again. The instant we nuked Nagasaki, though, we made it clear: we know precisely how barbaric this is and we will continue until you surrender.

To nuke them only once… if our goal was to force the Japanese surrender by use of nuclear weapons, we would have failed in our goal, and all the dead of Hiroshima would have died for precisely nothing.

I can’t say as how I entirely agree with ghodamus. But I do find it to be a disquietingly insightful view.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I understand the Japanese High Command was much in two minds after Hiroshima. There was debate as to whether they should actually surrender. "Perhaps they had only one," was one school of thought. "We might consider a peace settlement on favorable terms." Then we dropped a second one on Nagasaki ... and they sued for unconditional surrender.

I don't underestimate the human cost of those two bombs, but they did their job, and saved by some estimates as many as a million lives. We will never know how many offensives by the Soviet Union were deterred by the knowledge not only that the US had nuclear weapons, but that we were demonstrably prepared to use them at need.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

When you are running out of ammo, the last thing you want to do is act like you are running out of ammo.

I find it silly to attempt to debate what would have happened if only we had done it differently. We dropped an atomic weapon, twice. It ended the war. Period. I respect the decision making process enough to endorse the action. I find your friend's reasoning to be sound and valid. Just because we do not like the solution, does not mean it is not a solution.