What kind of world allows its "scruples" to bind its hands so that a bunch of illiterate fishermen with assault rifles can extort millions of dollars from shipping companies while the world's governments stand helpless? Do you find something pathetic about pirates operating, apparently with impunity, off the eastern coast of Africa? Am I the only one who thinks there is something wrong with this picture?
This whole thing is pathetic, and it reveals that the system that permits it is pathetic too. We have a military that squashed flat Saddam Hussein and his entire army in three weeks. Our navy is second to none. But our leadership so lacks courage and focus that we sit helpless in the face of "piracy" that is almost laughable in its lack of armament or technology.
No less an American icon than President Thomas Jefferson went to war against the pirates of Tripoli, and won. We hear the echos of his attacks in the Marine Hymn, "...the shores of Tripoli." At the very least we should sink and destroy every craft larger than a kayak along the Somali coast. We could make it very dangerous to be a coastal Somali, but we probably won't.
