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

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

At risk of sounding like a barbarian—

Terry Pratchett once said humanity is the point where the falling angel meets the rising ape. There’s a lot of truth to that, to be sure. Whenever someone who is at that intersection dies, we all suffer the loss.

But: as bad as humanity is today, humanity is a hell of a lot better than we ever were when we were swinging in trees. We are fundamentally primates, small and relatively hairless members of the great ape family, and we do not inherently possess any more natural rights than any other primate.

At some point, we choose to assert our additional rights, and we agree to shoulder additional responsibilities. This is where we stop being primates and become that most special creature in the known cosmos: humans. Humans have human rights.

Piracy is, in my mind, one of the — if not the — worst crimes against the social order. It is a refutation of everything that a human being is expected to be.

I have tremendous compassion for human life. I regret whenever it is ended, for whatever reason it is ended.

Violent primates can all eat lead and die, as far as I’m concerned. Doesn’t matter if it’s a crazy chimp in suburbia or a Somali pirate on the high seas.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I prefer to allow people to learn from other's mistakes. In the final analysis, that is indeed what is possible here. We will see what the pirates learn.

Any taking, by local might, rather than the creative use of resources and effort, deserves your categorization of piracy. Trying to live by preying on your society is counter productive from an evolutionary standpoint. The behavior needs to be eliminated.

I would prefer that the pirates be given the chance to evolve and join the human race. Humans are special. I regret the loss of life. I do not regret the enforcement of law against criminal behavior. I would prefer a different endpoint, but I do not begrudge the one we have. This has the virtue of working. As Sgt. Dan "One Drop" Trooper commented, "I never see someone up here twice."

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

So far, the lesson of other people's mistakes has not fully sunk in, it appears. Several known pirates are now blustering and boasting that they'll make France and the USA regret using force, so it seems at least a few more salutary lessons will be required.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Willful ignorance, or stupidity, is a capital crime. Without the intervention of others, the world will exact it's price. I hear the bluster. Let's see what they really do. They do have a single data point to draw from, it may take reinforcement to show that it is a trend. As I said, I wish it was different, but I accept that it is needed.

[hrrunka]

Piracy is, in my mind, one of the — if not the — worst crimes against the social order.

Oh, I'd put terrorism a way further over on that scale, myself...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

So would I. That comment had been bothering me, but I couldn't put my thumb on it enough to put it into words.


Pirates are at least relatively honest: They're in it for the money. Terrorists spout a lot of ideology, that sounds noble at least to them, but the truth is that most of the nastiest bastards among them aren't in it for any grand ideals; they just like to hurt and kill people.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

I side with Elie Wiesel on this one: willful apathy is a greater sin than hate. Hizbollah might be driven to violence by frothing–at–the–mouth hate, but pirates just don’t care about your life one way or another. In my mind, that makes their crimes of violence more heinous.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I suppose that one can go either way. I tend to rank malice above disinterest. The person governed by disinterest is unlikely to go out of his way to kill you unless you represent a threat; the one governed by hatred will kill you merely because you exist.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Again going back to Wiesel — this time, as an eyewitness to the Holocaust, not as a moral commentator — the really virulent anti–Semitism of the Third Reich was focused in the higher ranks, and among those flunkies who were actively aspiring to those ranks. Most of the rest of the Germans who participated in the Holocaust thought of themselves as doing a distasteful job. They felt no real animus for the people they were exterminating; they instead complained about how much their jobs sucked and how backbreaking the work was. In the midst of murder, they had persuaded themselves that they were the ones who were truly put–upon.

In my book, it isn’t quite so much indifference that’s worse than malice, but deadly narcissism. The two tend to go hand in hand. Someone who is scraping the bottommost depths of narcissism is not one who will avoid killing you unless you make a threat; they seem rather to be people who would do so just because they think they can get away with it.

I’ve known a couple of deadly narcissists. I’ll tell you about the sagas sometime, if you like. Between them and common goblins, I’d rather deal with the goblins. But this is quickly leaving the realm of moral argument and entering the purely subjective.

That said, please don’t interpret what I’m saying here as “narcissism/indifference is clearly worse than murderous hate.” At some point it’s a judgment call on the individual’s part. I’m just sharing my reasoning. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And you have a point. As always.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

I’m surprised you don’t consider acts of piracy to be acts of terror. They may not be as political as some terrorists — but then again, some terrorists aren’t motivated by politics, either.

[hrrunka]

There aren't clear lines between those categories. An act of piracy may also be an act of terrorism but is not necessarily one.