Wednesday, April 8, 2009

What? Muslim pirates reneged on a deal? Shades of the Barbary Pirate Wars and Blackhawk Down.

  Pirates hold U.S. ship's skipper, officer aboard says

  • "There's four Somali pirates, and they've got our captain," Ken Quinn said in a ship-to-shore phone interview.Capt. Richard Phillips is being held in the Maersk Alabama's 28-foot lifeboat, Quinn said. The crew had a plan to make an exchange for their captain."We had a pirate we took and kept him for 12 hours," Quinn said. "We tied him up and he was our prisoner."
  • The crew gave back their prisoner but the pirates reneged on the plan and are continuing to hold Phillips captive.
***Where is Teddy Roosevelt when he's needed? Recall when Perdicaris was kidnapped by Raisuli and TR telegraphed  to Morocco: "PERDICARIS ALIVE OR RAISULI DEAD"  It will be interesting to see whether whether Obama is closer to TR or to Bill Clinton who turned tail and ran the last time things got tough vis a vis the Somalis. Let's hope Barack isn't put to the test.
Are the options really as lacking as the AP thinks in the following article?***
For US, few options to prevent, fight piracy
AP 

WASHINGTON – The U.S. sent warships speeding to the scene...the world's greatest sea power...only limited options to respond to the startling seizure of American merchant seamen...The limits of U.S. power are a hard reality...But the U.S. ships were 300 nautical miles...away ...the Bainbridge is a guided missile destroyer carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles, torpedoes and two MH-60 Knighthawk helicopters armed with Hellfire missiles...t was not clear what the military crews would do... carries with it the ScanEagle, a 40-pound drone with night vision. It can fly as high as 16,000 feet and linger over a target for more than 20 hours. ... ****In this case, it should be possible for the recovered ship to track the lifeboat with the hostage that is returning to the "mother ship" and for the drones/helios to get there to continue the surveillance. Once the mother ship is located, the bargaining power would seem to shift: at a minimum it could be disabled so as not to sail at speed. ****U.S. legal authority is limited,... pirates, ... have little reason to fear capture. ****This is more a reflection of lack of will. There seems UN justification for doing something including centuries-old laws of the sea. IN ANY EVENT, what are the pirates going to do if apprehended...sue? ****...Oceans of that immense size cannot be patrolled completely, even with high-tech detection equipment doing some of the work...****Still, speedy air assets should be deployable sufficient to get and keep surveillance on pirate skiffs and mother ships after radio alert that a hijacking has occurred and where.***There are also legal questions about where and how to prosecute pirates, and about how far the U.S. military can or should go to help or protect commercial ships...****Incredible! Similar "problems" led the international community in the past to the reasonable practice of hanging pirates when apprehended. If too Draconian, they could be incarcerated wherever Guantanamo residents will be sent or stored in prison ships ( perhaps with oars ) that could ply the same waters. ****In December, ... sought and won U.N. Security Council authorization to expand international naval operations against Somali pirates to allow the pursuit of suspects on the ground in Somalia...But U.S. defense officials say the only realistic solution is on shore in Somalia, where money from the piracy ransoms fuels militant activities...the Pentagon is looking at the issue of ordering strikes inside Somalia and said that, "ultimately, the solution to the problem of piracy is ashore — in Somalia." ****So, what is the problem? Unneeded legal authorization nevertheless exists. When a problem exists, some lawyer-types think nothing can be done unless some legal justification exists. This is the French legal view. Anglo-Saxon law usually says that you can do anything that isn't specifically prohibited by operative law. Is the ACLU really going to sue on behalf of ...pirates? Even if they do ( realizing that it isn't as far-fetched as one might think )...should we really care? ****




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