The Pirate-Hostage drama is a test of wills and civilization

Personal drama aside, this is turning into a morality play and more is at stake even than one brave man's life.

Two schools of Western thought are forming, both agreeing that the issue can only be resolved on shore in Somaia.
One adopts the "root causes" story arguing that the poor Somalis are forced to the business of piracy by their poverty. This
argument also says that the pirates are NOT terrorists but "merely" criminals who should, at worst, be handled by the
criminal justice system ( although WHERE there is jurisdiction is questionable given the legalistic viewed espoused by these
people.)
The second says that pirates are a kind of terrorist, threats against hostages being evidence of this and that further
appeasement of these people by paying ransoms only increases the problem instead of resolving it.

The issue is coming to a head with the entrepreneurial and creative pirates actually trying to come to reinforce their comrades
holding Captain Phillips by sailing to the scene WITH other hostages ( German, Taiwanese, etc. )they are holding. Their goal is clearly to get all their hostages back to Somalia where their negotiating position will be strengthened to the level they have maintained in recent years. For the U.S. Navy, which is on the scene, to allow this out of "humanitarian considerations" would be to confer immunity on piracy and to cause American-flag ships, along with all others, to be raided with impunity. One can almost anticipate other countries applying pressure to "save" their own nationals brought to the scene as hostages and arguing that paying ransoms is merely a cost of doing business. The French, however, have just attacked a hostage yacht resulting in the death of one hostage and two pirates.

Those who have any knowledge of history ( unfortunately, not clearly including members of the Obama administration ) will recall that similar arguments were made by many at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries when Thomas Jefferson adopted the policy, unusual at the time, of waging war against Muslim pirates. That was not the "European" attitude at the time when hostages were forcibly converted to Islam and/or sold into slavery.

It hardly seems credible that the U.S. Navy cannot interdict both the escape of the subject lifeboat to Somalia and any pirate vessels attempting to reconnoiter with it. U.S.Destroyers should be able to prevent any conceivable pirate vessel, including captured commercial ships, from entering any zone without even needing to use lethal force. Even without modern naval technology, an old one would be to place clearly marked mines in the path.

It should also be made clear that the legal situation will be resolved BY THE U.S. in favor of traditional, if old-fashioned expediencies. This is probably the most problematical given the legalistic arguments about jurisdiction and eschewal of capital punishment even should hostages be murdered. Difficulties in incarcerating captive pirates in olden times led to the expedient practice of hanging them at sea. In modern times, many seem more worried about the "civil rights" of pirates than deterring this threat to civilization. Somehow, the pirates should be convinced that harming hostages will result in lethal punishment for anyone involved and, further, that even the non-state havens of pirates will be attacked.

It's funny that this problem surfaces in the same form with similar players every hundred years: Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s, Teddy Roosevelt ( Perdicaris and Raisuli ) in the early 1900s and now Obama in 2009. One wonders if he is of the same mettle.