There’s this old saying that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," that everyone in the world seems to attribute to whoever their favorite philosopher was. Truth is, George Santayana, wrote it in his book, Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1. But absolutely no one argues about its veracity.
Today we find ourselves, as a nation, faced with a very similar situation as it relates to the current state of affairs in Somalia, where pirates seem to be acting without fear of reprisal. They randomly take control of tankers or container ships that venture throughout the Arabian Sea from off the coast of Oman to the Seychelles and pretty much any and every point in between.
Every country seems to be annoyed with these rascals, and some have actually done a thing or two about them, including the US. But, more often than not, the companies or associated countries opt instead to just pay the ransom, often in the millions, to have the ships released.
All this may seem very diplomatic. But it is poor diplomacy; it’s like having Neville Chamberlain for Prime Minister. This is not the first time in the history of this country that pirates and piracy were an issue, and I am not talking about Internet piracy either. In fact, you can have all the “illegal downloads” you want, as far as I am concerned. This piracy, however, could use a little old fashioned political emphasis.
A large number of people today don’t even know that the United States faced similar pirate issues in the past. Sure, it was a long time ago, but the incidents were memorialized in the Marine Theme song, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” It’s the shores of Tripoli that I am talking about, and it happened just after Thomas Jefferson took office.
Jefferson had to deal with the Barbary Pirates, based off the North African coast in Morocco, Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. Piracy was seriously hampering a fledgling United States from conducting business by capturing her merchant fleet and holding them for ransom, early Al Qaeda no doubt.
Even Jefferson, a person who was not so interested in getting the US involved in battles on foreign soil, was moved to take action. On August 1st, the USS Enterprise defeated the Tripoli, a 14-gun ship. A year later, congress passed an act for the Protection of Commerce and seamen of the United States against the Tripolitan cruisers. That effectively was the end of the Barbary pirates as the US sent six ships under the command of Commodore Edward Preble to bring an end to piracy off the coast of Africa.
Today we face a very similar situation in Somalia. While it seems that peaceful, if not expensive, acceptance is the way of most shipping firms today, we might want to keep in mind our not too distant past.
The piracy taking place right now needs to stop. It’s too costly, in both financial and human life, and the simple and most direct answer is to hunt them down and take direct action. After recent actions to save two people being held by the pirates, they have come out and moved another prisoner and stated that any other such action would be met with a stand to the death.
In my way of thinking, that’s an invitation. These pirates have not shown themselves to be tactical geniuses. True they have taken control of generally unarmed and unprotected merchant vessels, but tangling with the US Navy and in particular Seal Team 6 hasn’t exactly proved to be productive.
I think we need to feed them some more of the same. We should not be wasting time negotiating with this group of riff raff. Let’s take a page out of the 1803 book on how to handle pirates, follow TJ’s lead, and start going to work. I am sure we don’t need to allow this scourge to continue to thrive along the Somalia coast.
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