It’s hard to imagine anything going wrong with this plan:
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and a growing number of national security experts are calling on Congress to consider using letters of marque and reprisal, a power written into the Constitution that allows the United States to hire private citizens to keep international waters safe.
Used heavily during the Revolution and the War of 1812, letters of marque serve as official warrants from the government, allowing privateers to seize or destroy enemies, their loot and their vessels in exchange for bounty money.
Here’s one of those national security experts:
“If we have 100 American wanna-be Rambos patrolling the seas, it’s probably a good way of getting the job done,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow and security expert Eli Lehrer.
Fencedude
…what?
Zifnab
Yeah, so my tenative support for Ron Paul just went the way of the Titanic.
Nikki
Yeah! So the Americans can play pirate, but with government approval!
Keith
Jeez, tell the Minutemen they can shoot dark people AND go fishing? This is gonna be a disaster.
canuckistani
Please, please, please do it. The world needs American vigilantes patrolling the Indian Ocean. Damned if the shark hunting fleet from Jaws isn’t springing to mind.
pto892
Seize their loot? Does that mean what I think it means?
Step 1: let pirates take Saudi oil tanker.
Step 2: kill pirates and seize oil tanker.
Step 3: Profit!
It’s a win/win situation, baby! Think it through, people. This can be made to work. Oh, and Ron Paul!
Llelldorin
So the problem is that we have a pirate gap with Somalia?
Yeah, no.
Hugh
The thing to look for is who will get behind this plan.
Kryptik
You know…wasn’t that in the days that we hadn’t quite established a fully-relegated national, federally funded army?
Yeah, I can’t imagine the problem with having a couple hundred "gun enthusiasts" living out Rambo fantasies and playing war. I mean, they’re just like normal soldiers! Just…without the discipline or experience!
jrg
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that if you have enough money to buy the military hardware, ships, and logistical support required to go privateering halfway around the world, you won’t find anything in a single-engine, 21-foot Somali dingy that’s worth your time or money.
Hugh
The far right, which is the right these days, wants to take us further and further back in time. We’re now proposing international policy from the 18th century. Next stop, feudalism.
Bill Teefy
@Llelldorin: (Black) Spot On!
And…
I do wonder why libertarians…errconservatives…erridiots keep coming up with ways to spend tax dollars that we don’t have on alternatives that we cannot manage and hold acccountable like our police and military forces.
I want to see the business model where this ends up costing us less. Sure it may seem like we are getting off cheaper but the Iraq thing paid for itself too.
scav
Come come, there’s a common thread. In order to combat terrorists during the last administration, we had to adopt their techniques Go Jack B! It follows with pirates (aargghhh) under this admin. Johnny D! Rhammmbo!!! We can only hope that soon, we’ll adopt the same winning techniques facing those other major and still more serious threats to American destiny, teh gays and drugs.
celticdragon
The only people with the resources to do this halfway around the world are major security firms like Xe or Triple Canopy. I rather like the notion of setting up bait in an otherwise unused merchantman or yacht and wait for pirates to come calling.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship" rel="nofollow">
Zifnab
@Hugh: Transcontinental road system? Real men ride horseback over the plains or travel by steam boat ferry.
Textiles Industry? True Americas have a flock of sheep out back that they use to make wool pants and sweeters.
Proper English? Me talk in grunts and head bashing.
Me gonna tell friends over twitter. Ugh ugh.
pto892
So when does Joe the Plumber become Joe the Privateer?
This has the potential to become awesome.
Bill H
But not used, as far as I have been able to find, to any extensive degree by the United States and, sadly for Dr. Paul, outlawed by treaty in 1856.
There is also the minor detail that many of the historic pirates started out as persons sailing under letters of marque. They tended to become a bit cavalier about just whom they attacked in order to, wait for it, maximize orifits.
SpotWeld
Letters of marque allowed priavteers to attack merchant ships flying under the flag of an enemy nation.
Pirates will fly the flag of any nation.
If this plan were implimented. Well armed pirates would not be targeted because they would be risky and expensive to take down. Rather, "private security firms" would harass and plunder "suspicious watercraft" and the US would get stuck with two bills.
One from the robbed merchants (regardless if they were pirates, bootleggers or whatever..) and one from the security firm for the priviledge of having them do thier skullduggery in the name of the US!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Personally, I think this is a great idea. Why? It’ll get those assholes out of our country and potentially killed on the high seas.
If we get really lucky, they won’t have had time to reproduce either!
Anoniminous
As the Right Wing continues its descent into vacuuous inanity or¹ jibbering buffoonery the bemused bystander can only wonder where it will all end.
¹ Inclusive OR, BTW.
NonyNony
Ah yes. An excellent bit of sarcasm by Mr. Eli Lehrer there. You can almost hear the tone of his voice as he scoffs at this rather silly idea of setting up our own roaming band of privateers …
Oh wait, he’s serious. And he’s using the phrase "wanna-be Rambos" in something that isn’t mockery. WTF?
Also he has this bit that you left out of the quote:
And the last time our Navy fought a naval battle with another Navy was – when? This is the exact same problem that our Army has – it’s built to fight other Armies, not really to fight small bands of armed insurgents. So we’re modernizing our Army to be more effective in this area, though I guess I will admit we have been experimenting with outsourcing the work to mercenary groups. How well has THAT bit of "cost savings" been working out for us?
@celticdragon:
Ah yes. Exactly what we want to have – armed mercenary groups roaming the seas with their actions approved of by the US government. I don’t see how that could possibly be a bad idea. At all.
Woodrowfan
once again I wonder why ANYBODY with an IQ above, oh, 80 or so, takes Ron Paul seriously….
jibeaux
It doesn’t even make any sense. We have a NAVY. I’m not informed enough to know whether this would work, what all the disadvantages are, etc., but shouldn’t we at least try the Navy before resorting to vigilantes…?
pto892
@celticdragon: The problem with the Q Ships is that they really didn’t work out as intended. One of the reasons why German U-boats in WWI switched to using torpedoes while submerged (i.e., sneak attack) instead of stopping a ship while surfaced, allowing the crew to debark on lifeboats, and then sinking the target using the deck gun was because of the threat of Q Ships. The Kriegsmarine felt that U-boat warfare as they were practicing it was a legitimate method and that the Brits had broken the rules by responding with Q Ships. So they upped the ante-and sank a hell of a lot more shipping by sneak attack than they ever could have using the original methods. There’s no reason to believe that the Somali pirates wouldn’t respond to such a threat in their own way. They don’t have anything to lose, and a lot more to gain.
The Germans later came up with their own type of Q ship, the best known example of which was the Kormoran of WWII fame. The Kormoran started life as a 14K ton refrigerated cargo ship and was converted to carry torpedoes, disguised guns, etc. The Kormoran managed to sink the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney in what has to be one of the greatest of all time naval upsets.
Robin G.
If I gave this the eyeroll it deserved I’d need surgery to restore my sight.
sparky
uhm, last time i checked, the USA (obligatory grunt here) didn’t border the Indian Ocean. i’m guessing that maybe every other country whut did could loose (lose!) their citizens upon teh USA.
mmm … beef-fed Texas kabob….
Hugh
I think a common thread to many of the crazy proposals from those on the right is their belief in the use of raw power as a primary way of getting things done. That mindset has little use for negotiated agreements. This is a Ron Paul proposal however and he doesn’t so neatly fit into the far right fold in many respects. He’s just nuts in his own incredibly reductive way. Let’s see who comes out saying this is a great idea. It should be attractive to the usual suspects since it’s all about unleashing our power with maximum chaos while eroding our international relationships. Perfect!
Comrade Dread
Oh, Ron Paul… Just when I think you’re saying something that makes sense, you go and do this.
If you were going to suggest a private solution to piracy, I think it would make more sense to just arm our freighters.
Rommie
This sounds like a Family Guy Episode in the making – Peter gets to use his boat again!
Mike in NC
Hey, Sam would look quite the swashbuckler in one of those "puffy shirts" from Seinfeld. If the US government outsourced the anti-pirate patrols to Halliburton, maybe we could get Dick Cheney to dress up in an eye patch and peg leg, with a monkey or parrot on his shoulder. He’d be good at saying "arrrrgh!"
AhabTRuler
@jibeaux:That opinion piece proves only one point: don’t take advice from the ill-informed or op-ed writers (oops, redundant).
Rick Taylor
While I’m no fan of the far right, you can’t blame them for Ron Paul. His brand of idealistic libertarian conservatism is not at all popular with them, especially when he came out as the only Republican anti-Iraq war candidate in the Presidential contest.
Bill H
@jibeaux: That plan…
…is nonsense. From the highest point on an average-sized ship you can see about twenty miles. That means patrolling ships can be no more than forty miles apart. Take 400,000 square miles and start placing ships at forty-mile intervals and see how many ships it requires.
So instead you are going to interdict the coastline of Somalia. How many miles of coast are there? I don’t know the answer, but look at a map: it’s a hell of a lot of miles. Ships at forty mile intervals? We don’t have that many ships.
celticdragon
Whether you like it or not, (and I am not wild about it myself) private security is taking the place of traditional state actors at increasing rate, and projections from a number of knowledgeable experts only point upwards.
Xe and similar outfits will likely want to go the route of providing security rather then trying to outfit armed cutters and manage the logistics of operation off the east Africa coast. They are already providing training courses to the Navy and private shippers on how to use small arms at sea and repel boarders in a constructed lagoon at the NC facility.
Snark and mockery is easy, but the reality is that militarized private security is here for good or ill, and they are not going away.
cleek
these clowns would be constantly getting shot by Somalis, shot by one another, capsizing, becoming hostages…
we’d spend millions rescuing them.
a couple of satellites or a few recon planes could do the job.
fastandsloppy
Back in the bad old days most pirates started out operating under letters of Marque and decided they’d do better off as free agents. The infestation of pirates in the Caribean in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century was a direct result of this policy. The only thing this plan is good for is generating better armed, better trained pirates.
It’s not like this is obscure history. Read any book about piracy or naval warfare in the new world and it is blindingly obvious. Why are these people so ignorant?
Jon H
@pto892: "Step 2: kill pirates and seize oil tanker."
Or even better, "seize ship full of Ukrainian tanks and heavy weapons".
Leelee for Obama
This so so accidently full of win!
One can enjoy the real intention as well as the somewhat scatological interpretation.
Thanks, Bill H
Brachiator
@Kryptik:
Not quite. The navy dates from 1794 (actually, earlier), and there was a time when even official government ships could seize booty. These nimrods conveniently forget that one of the problems that the early US navy faced was the bigger, stronger British navy seizing American ships and sailors.
Still, the people advocating this stuff seeme to be in such a psychological state of shock that a black man is president that they need to imagine themselves as living in the country’s past, and they are the only "real" Americans, white Christian Patriots with Guns (WCPWG).
ricky
If you damn bleeding hearts had not given money to Sally Struthers those starving African children would not have grown up to be starving African teenage pirates in the first place.
ericvsthem
Something mentioned on NPR’s Planet Money last week – but completely missed by the rest of the press – is that merchant ships have increasingly been sailing around the horn of Africa in order to cut costs. Apparenty it is cheaper to spend an extra week at sea than to pay to sail through the Suez Canal.
The Planet Money report – which aired just days before the piracy incident – specifically mentioned the Maersk shipping company as a party to this cost saving practice.
Hugh
Rick Taylor says,
Point well taken. I corrected myself in a later comment.
Col. Klink
I hope my tax dollars that went to the automotive industry bailout (who don’t need no stinking government obviously)now help subsidize awesome studies like this one.
John Cole
If you want to know how bad of an idea this is, the first time I heard of it was from Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush last fall.
ricky
Did you miss the film "Bring me the head of Diego Garcia Island?"
celticdragon
I am familiar with the fight between the Kormoran and HMAS Sydney. It was one of the few mutually fatal naval duels on record.
Cool photos here of the wrecks of both ships, including photographic evidence of deadly accurate shooting by the Germans.
href="http://www.findingsydney.com/gallery.asp" rel="nofollow">
Cris
So we thought Ron Paul was a strict Constitutionalist, a Libertarian in the true sense of the word, but now we see that what actually drives him is nostalgia for the early 19th century.
Is it possible that he’s an immortal, born around the same time as George Washington, pining for the days of his youth?
Comrade Dread
Can we please limit all comments about head to the correct tea bag protest threads?
Mike in NC
Leyte Gulf 1944 ?
Militarized private security is yet another bad idea cooked up by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld in order to (1) enrich their cronies and supporters, (2) outsource former government responsibilities to the private sector in the name of the Free Market, and (3) attempt to make up for allocating inadequate resources in the first place. Aren’t there still as many hired goons driving around Iraq as there are real soldiers?
SpotWeld
To wignuts the heavily armed bands of fetishists in Mad Max aren’t a bug, they’re a feature.
DougJ
Why did I stop reading that? It’s pure genius.
GSD
Why don’t we supply all merchant vessels with a plank?
Pirates attack. Pirates get overpowered. Pirates forced to walk the plank.
Victory!
-GSD
fastandsloppy
You’ve really hit on something Ricky. What problems can’t be solved by retroactively starving children to death?
fester
Going back up thread, the 1856 Treaty of Paris outlawed privateering by almost all advanced states at that time. The only exception was the US, which did not sign nor ratify the treaty. HOWEVER, the US screamed bloody murder during the Civil War as the South used privateers that received significant support from British and French ports. The Brits response to US whining was that they would stop supporting anti-US privateers in any future conflict that the US was involved if the US agreed to give up privateering as a right. However there was no grandfathering against Confederate raiders and privateers.
Vic
"God Damn them all! I was told
We’d cruise the seas for American gold.
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears!
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier,
The last of Barrett’s privateers."
If nothing else, maybe we can inspire a few new folk ballads. "The Wreck of the Wanna-Be Rambos," anyone? Maybe the Tea-Bag Anthem guy can get to work on that.
celticdragon
Hmm.
To some extent the growth of private security firms is a throwback to the past. The Pinkerton detective agency — now part of Securitas A.B., the largest global security company — spied for the Union Army during the Civil War and investigated cases of counterfeiting. It was Pinkerton that introduced the mugshot and the rap sheet.
And private security firms still spark controversy. Just as Pinkerton was accused of strikebreaking and protecting the rich at the turn of the last century, so, too, are the rise of gated communities, private prisons, well-guarded elites and the export of military expertise seen today as measures further separating haves from have-nots.
Nevertheless, the trend is clear and in the future, private firms are expected to take the lead in many new arenas, such as the burgeoning field of electronic security. "The government can’t compete," argues O’Gara. "The decision-making process is too slow, too cumbersome and the government doesn’t pay enough. There’ll be a talent drain to the private sector."
href="http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20000213security1.asp" rel="external">
El Cid
No one could have anticipated that having a private vessel end up in a shootout with another nation’s military forces where that nation feels its sovereignty has been violated would have created any problems whatsoever.
Barry Soetoro
@Hugh:
Missed a step: chattel slavery in the Americas FTW!
El Cid
The Pinkertons and similar hired guns for the bosses also helped introduce many unions to organized crime, since unions weren’t as wealthy and couldn’t hire private police forces to take on the bosses’ violence, but they could make deals with the local mobs.
Dennis-SGMM
This could work. I can foresee some lively fights among the pirates as to who would capture and ransom the fat, white. wannabe-Rambos in the big boat.
Halteclere
@ericvsthem:
Someone is confused here. Ships are sailing past the horn of Africa on their way to or from the Suez Canal. The alternative for avoiding Somalia is for ships to sail around the southern tip of Africa.
pto892
So far this is a thread of win…let’s hope it stays that way.
As far as I can tell the Somali pirates are acting in a completely logical and predictable way. They’re armed businessmen who make a living by kidnapping ship crews, ransoming them, and letting them on their way. This has worked well so far but now that the professionals are on the scene the rules have changed in a way that they don’t like. The USN and those sneaky French have started killing them in a measured and restrained sort of way. They don’t like it, so they’ve already blustered about threatening to kill American and French sailors, shooting at US flagged ships, and so forth. But that’s bad for business in the long run-everyone understands under the present rules that the game is to not kill the hostages or sink the ships-otherwise there is no payoff. The same applies to privateers, armed crews, or security teams. Once they show up then the rules change, and not for the better. If the pirates encounter significant armed resistance they aren’t going to simply fold up operations-they will punch back as hard as they can. Yes, I’m sure that they could not take out a professional security team from the private contractors. But those guys will not be on every ship out there, and there will still be lots of targets of opportunity for the pirates. The pirates will be a lot less restrained too-much more likely to kill their hostages if things aren’t resolved very quickly in their favor. Is that what we want?
Deal with the conditions in Somalia-the lack of government, the civil war, the utter lack of opportunity that doesn’t involve a gun. The solution is to fix Somalia enough to give it a functioning government. I know that this is something that no one wants to deal with, but there it is.
anonevent
@NonyNony: This goes back to my suggestion on another thread of fitting our Nimitz class carriers with rows upon rows of cannons.
scav
Oh goody! Securitized Tranches of Pirate Booty! The – copper plated – bottom is in!
JoyceH
When I first heard about this pirate situation, I just knew it was a situation that American mercenary – whoops, scuse me, meant to say ‘private security’ – firms would want to profit from. Problem is that not every small boat in that region is a pirate vessel, and if we learned anything from Iraq, we learned that these firms have a tendency to hire guys who are violence-prone to the point of insanity. Man, that’s all we need to repair our national image – a bunch of beefy, roided up, snarling American mercenaries patrolling the waters and sinking everything that floats.
aimai
The ‘q’ ships problem seems to be overstated. Of course during WWII the sensible thing for the germans to do was to escalate and simply destroy lots of potential "q" ships rather than waiting to find out if they were decoys or not. But its a damned poor *pirate* strategy since the whole point of the piracy, as far as I can see, is to seize the ship/crew/cargo and ransom it. They aren’t even really stealing and reselling the stuff. If they blow up a ship because they fear its a Q ship there’s no profit and if they fail to blow up a Q ship they end up captured or maimed. Q ships would definitely be the way to go *except that* no doubt the pirates have better information than we expect and they can probably avoid Q ships and happilly keep seizing regular cargo ships.
aimai
pto892
@celticdragon:
Well, it was really fatal for the crew of the Sydney, what with no survivors and all that. As I recall, most of the Kormoran’s crew survived and spent the rest of the war as guests of the Australians. One of the great mysteries of WWII was solved once both wrecks were found and analyzed, correct?
Brachiator
@JoyceH:
It’s funny. The producers of the show "24" get a lot of grief for being ultra-American torture fetishists.
And yet this season’s plot features a bad guy played by Jon Voight who tries to convince the president of the United States that only his private army can guarantee the country’s security, and he is not above manufacturing incidents in order to get his way.
r€nato
I think this is an excellent idea. I am certain that the 82nd Chairborne and the 101st Fighting Keyboardists will step right up to prove their manliness, take up the slack caused by Obama’s wimpy foreign policy and take part in the massive profits by signing up to go to sea and attack pirates.
…
…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
celticdragon
I think we tried that already. Didn’t work out well from what I remember.
Considering that even if ample opportunity were available, pirates stand to make money on a level unseen by most Americans and Europeans, much less sub Saharan Africans…
Why should they not continue to make massive profits in this way? Any carrot must be paired with an impressive stick, and that means people are going to be killed.
The thread at the Volokh Conspiracy has gone over rational profit/loss decisions made by the carriers, but it still boils down to paying protection money to criminals and hoping that some guy short on khat doesn’t shoot holes through a hostage that pissed him off. Assuming that drug addicted criminals will be completely rational about their decision making wrt cargo and hostages is about as abusive to your employees as you can get.
Tsulagi
That’s funny. Go Ron Paul!! After their soirees today to play victim, maybe the teabagging warriors could be persuaded to seize this private enterprise opportunity to further show their stuff.
Given projected revenues from their cash cow, Iraq, aren’t looking great, I would think security firms like Xe and Triple Canopy might try marketing their services to insurance carriers and ship owners eating the losses from this piracy.
BTW, the Blackwater name is no more. Due to a few misunderstood incidents tainting the Blackwater brand, they changed their name to Xe. Problem solved.
Woody
Spike, the cable net, has ALREADY signed on with the Navy for a ‘reality-show’ featuring pirate-hunting…
r€nato
if ‘the job’ is ridding ourselves of chest-beating internet wanna-be tough guys, then yeah I’d have to agree with that statement.
joes527
@fester:
You can stop right there. The folks behind this aren’t interested in hearing about any Frenchified world-government type "treaty" that attempts to usurp US sovereignty.
We are Amuricans Dammit. A law unto ourselves. The rest of the world can take their treaties and suck on them.
(Oh wait. That was the last president I was thinking of. Never mind)
pto892
@aimai:
World War One-the Q ships were the initial British reaction to U-boats in that war. U-boats originally operated by surfacing, stopping a ship, inspecting it for war material, let the crew depart on lifeboats, and then sinking it. The Brits sank a few U-boats by surprise, so the Germans responded by changing tactics. As far as I know Q ships never operated against U-boats in WWII since the Germans (as well as everyone else) pretty much went directly to submerged/surfaced torpedo attacks. German armed merchantmen (such as the Kormoran) were another matter.
You’re also missing the point-it’s going to be a lot easier and cheaper for the pirates to deal with Q ships then it is to create them and use them in the first place. They’re pirates, life is cheap. Their tactics can and will change a lot quicker then we can expect.
Corner Stone
Since the Somali pirates have nothing, what exactly would be the incentive to patrol for them? If the latter day anti-pirates attack and kill, or imprison or whatever, the pirates what financial reward is there? The private shipping lines couldn’t reward them as it would lead to liability. There’s no way the US is going to put a bounty on the head of a predominantly Muslim people.
Plus, I think a lot of y’all are giving the right wing nutters way too much credit. If history has taught us anything, and it hasn’t, it’s that the members of the Fighting 101st Keyboarders talk much smack, but never actually engage in anything that would expose them to the slightest physical danger.
So, if there’s no incentive system for private mercs, and the chickenhawk cowards don’t enroll for this, then who’ll do it?
ETA – Ah, I see r€nato got there way ahead of me, and probably others as well. The mockery just write itself.
celticdragon
Aimai
Well, that does depend on location. In the Malacca Straits, the plan is increasingly often to murder and dismember the crew, and feed them to the sharks. The cargo is sold and the ship renamed and reflagged, becoming a phantom ship.
Bill H
@fester: Thanks
As I read that, though, the U.S. has internationally agreed to eschew letters of marque, but the confederacy did not. So are we proposing, then, that these privateers fly the Stars and Bars? Now, I am a die-hard Southerner and all that (long live Milliken’s Bend) but, that seems counter-productive.
Damned at Random
Barrett’s privateers by the great Stan ROgers- Vic alluded to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl-CfQvz21Y&feature=related
A letter of marque came from the king
to the scummiest vessel I’ve ever seen
Great song
Evinfuilt
What the 21st Century needs is more 19th Century ideas!!!
celticdragon
All the same, you want the criminals reacting to your moves, not vice versa.
I expect the pirates to change tactics. They are not stupid, but you keep forcing them to change and create a dynamic where the profit/risk margin becomes increasingly unfavorable for them. You won’t rid of all of them by any means without a functioning government in Somalia…and we can’t count on that. The choices are to let the status quo continue, which is becoming commercially and politically problematic…or begin making life more dangerous for the pirates.
celticdragon
Love that song!
I have a recording of Frank Emerson singing it at the Savannah Irish Festival a few years back. I used to catch him at Kevin Barry’s periodically and get him to perform it. One of my favorites.
pto892
@celticdragon:
Oh, I’m well aware of that. It sucks and I know that there is no easy solution. But a functioning Somali government would be far more likely to effectively deal with the problem then all the firepower we can bear. These guys already live a violent life. What’s the options for them anyway?
1) be a starving refugee.
2) be a dead refugee.
3) be a member of a militia, and not starve or be dead.
4) be a pirate, and be rich by Somali standards.
Take away the first two options, and you can then deal with the second two. Armed response is all very well and nice and is a legitimate option on our part but it’s not a solution.
Svensker
@Bill H:
Make big mouth spasms?
Corner Stone
It’s my understanding that like everything in life, the pirates don’t actually get rich but rather their bankster…I mean Warlord masters do.
You don’t think the warlords let the little peeps keep anything do you?
Svensker
@Mike in NC:
Didn’t he spend the last 8 years doing just that?
Brachiator
@pto892:
You can’t just give a country a functioning government, even if you have been complicit in disrupting that country’s government (and the US and the former Soviet Union were both guilty of mischief in that region that contributed greatly to Somalia’s problems).
The idea that anyone, whatever his or her ideology, knows how to do nation-building hovers between a polite fiction and outright delusion.
celticdragon
@pto892
I think I inadvertently addressed your point just above at comment 81.
Scott
We could probably just use "Friggin’ in the Riggin’"…
DPirate
Seems to work in the Strait of Malacca (apparently, I had said Malabbar originally). I’m talking about the waters around Singapore/Indonesia. I remember seeing a television program about anti-pirate companies. They basically get hired by shipping interests to protect their vessels as they pass the pirate-infested straits.
Surely, some of them are a protection racket, but apparently some are the real thing. Not sure what sort of licensing is involved, if any. It’s not the same as fighting fire with fire as the OP is speaking of, but just a step from it.
Honestly, security for shipping is the responsibility of the shipper, IMO. The american government has no business doing that sort of thing. Technically, haven’t we now invaded Somalia (again)?
What is this really about, though? Now that Blackwater is losing its Iraq gig, it’s looking for something new to sink it’s teeth into, right?
Dan McKinley
He has transcended everyday libertarianism into what should now be considered "cartoonish super-libertarianism."
AhabTRuler
I couldn’t disagree more, although I would agree that it is probably impossible in the current environment.
Aside from the obvious example of post-WWII West (and now just) Germany, I could suggest that Colonialism as a whole was precisely nation building. Of course it was also bigoted, bloody, exploitative, and often cruel, but in many places it worked, even over the objections of locals. Could it work today? Less likely, although many European nations still maintain close ties with former colonies (including support & stabilization, to varying levels of success).1
However, I would also argue that if the problems of a failed state cannot be solved with either money or explosives, the US does not have a lot to offer the situation.
1. I wouldn’t want to take this arguement to far, it is a real mixed-bag of clusterfuck when you start looking and former colonies on a case by case basis. [back]
Krista
Ah, that brings back so many memories. It’s an extremely popular drinking song in Halifax, and hearing it makes me think of nights down at the Lower Deck pub, banging my empty beer mug on the long, scarred pine tables there to the beat of that song. Good times.
With regards to the pirate issue, I think we should just issue a letter of marque to the next Hugh Hewitt cruise. Between the bathroom-stall Riverdancing shenanigans and the possibility of playing Rambo of the High Seas, we’d probably get 99% of the wingnuts out of the country all at once for an extended period of time.
Fencedude
I’d support them sending Q-Ships if they give the command to Honor Harrington.
Francis Drake
This is a wonderful idea!
AhabTRuler
@Fencedude: Only if you include 200 pages of Space-War-Tech-Porn.
AhabTRuler
And a couple of hand-to-hand combat deaths, as well.
celticdragon
Heh!
Since BSG has gone away, we need a new space opera.
I think H. Beam Piper got into this area with Space Viking come to think of it…
celticdragon
Oh the year was seventeen seventy eight
I wish I were in Sherbrooke now!
A letter of marque came from the King
To the scummiest vessel I’ve ever seen
God Damn them all! I was told
We’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett’s privateers.
Oh Elcid Barrett cried the town,
I wish I were in Sherbrooke now!
For twenty brave men, all fishermen, who
Would make for him the Antelope’s crew,
God Damn them all! I was told
We’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett’s privateers.
The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight.
She’d a list to port and her sails in rags,
And a cook in the scuppers with staggers and jags.
On the King’s birthday we put to sea.
We were ninety-one days to Montego bay,
Pumping like madmen all the way.
On the ninety-sixth day we sailed again.
When a bloody great Yankee hove in sight
With our cracked four-pounders we made to fight
The Yankee lay low down with gold.
She was broad and fat and loose in stays,
But to catch her took the Antelope two whole days
Then at length we stood two cables away.
Our cracked four-pounders made an awful din,
But with one fat ball the Yank stove us in.
The Antelope shook and pitched on her side.
Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs,
And the maintruck carried off both me legs.
So here I lay in my twenty-third year.
It’s been six years since we sailed away,
And I just made Halifax yesterday.
*sigh*
God, I loved listening to that song with a couple pints of Guinness under way…
pto892
@Brachiator:
I don’t claim to know how to give Somalia a functioning government, nor am I suggesting that it is our job to try to do so. I am well aware of our sad experience in Somalia and complicity in how the Somalians ended up how they are. The last thing I want the US to do is to put people ashore in Somalia to try to fix it. We already tried once and failed, the Ethiopians have already had a go at it and pulled out, so I have no good answer. What I am doing though is pointing out the obvious-without a functioning government in Somalia just about anything we do to address Somalian piracy is just pissing in the wind. Right now we had blue water USN assets chasing around people in 21 foot skiffs, and getting lucky because the last team of pirates were stoned teenagers who ran out of khat. Maybe I should phrase it this way: the goal is to end Somalian piracy and not to simply get back at the pirates.
pto892
@Corner Stone:
Sounds rather like my job…
Krista
Yep…that’d be the perfect song for the Wingnut Privateers.
And thanks for the lyrics, celticdragon — it prompted me to sing the whole thing while banging my travel mug on my desk. (My coworker takes our portable phone outside with her and talks on it while she smokes, making our phone reek, so she has to put up with a certain amount of random punishment from me.)
LV-426
If you only know how to swing a hammer every problem is a nail.
Has anyone checked in with Larison on this? He’s a big Ron Paul supporter.
Also why can’t Lord Becket just send Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchmen to the Solmali coast to deal with this problem?
celticdragon
@Krista
Glad to be of service ;-)
b-psycho
Why the emphasis on hiring someone else to do this?
If you know you’re going to go through dangerous waters, and you have no realistic way of avoiding it, then carry some arms on the ship. Simple. No need to get 3rd parties involved. Don’t like it? Then don’t go through those areas.
The status quo of "thank gawd for american imperialism!" is fucking stupid, I agree on that. But Paul’s proposed solution is, unfortunately, also fucking stupid.
Interrobang
The idea that anyone, whatever his or her ideology, knows how to do nation-building hovers between a polite fiction and outright delusion.
You know, this is something Canadians used to be pretty good at, at least. Seems to me we have a group of infrastructure experts who can be dispatched to fledgeling governments around the world to help them out. Although that kind of thinking is totally passe in a world where military force and "counterinsurgency" are the (marching) orders of the day.
Wile E. Quixote
@Vic
Hmmm, as soon as I heard "Wreck of the Wanna-Be Rambos" I realized that the scansion was the same as that of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Does anyone want to help me fill in the rest of the song below?
C’mon everybody, get your Gordon Lightfoot on! Let’s whip out the Canadian folk music mojo and party until no later than 10:30 PM.
Xanthippas
There, fixed now.
LV-426
Arming the ships will just cause the pirates to change tactics. There is absolutely no way to scare desperate people away from crime. It ain’t like they had a choice between piracy or Harvard.
Hard to avoid those waters unless you want to sail around Africa. The Suez canal was built for a reason.
jibeaux
@AhabTRuler:
Gwynne Dyer was in the naval reserves of three different countries. Also a Ph.D. and military historian. I’m no kind of expert, but he’s more than an op-ed writer.
TenguPhule
Yes, because it’s not like other powers wouldn’t instantly retaliate by issuing their own letters to whoever asks and we end up with good old 17th century clusterfucks with everybody attacking everyone else’s shipping with authorization.
This needs to be on the test for being an official security expert.
Anyone who agrees with Ron Paul needs to be flogged, stripped of any and all credentials pertaining to national security and publically shamed in the stocks.
TenguPhule
Or our navy could just you know, do it’s job.
Otherwise, why the fuck do we have one?
Fencedude
@AhabTRuler:
Yeah, if Honor had been taken captive by the pirates, she’d have killed them herself.
BY POINTING AT THEM
celticdragon
The legend lives on
from the CEI on down
of black pirates that came from Somalia
For East Africa bound
If we didn’t all drown
And the grips of our rifles we caressed.
Oh…………!
The Wreck of the Wanna-Be Rambos !
Oh…………!
The Wreck of the Wanna-Be Rambos !
Apologies to the late MP Bobby Sands for wrecking "I wish I was back home in Derry"
TenguPhule
The only problem with that is the friendly casualty rates would be horrific.
celticdragon
Yes. You want them to react to you. When they are forced to change to the new paradigm, you continue to fine tune your counter measures until you make the profit/risk ratio increasingly untenable for the pirates. You won’t get rid of all of them, but you can make it very difficult and dangerous to continue.
Krista
Stupid strikethrough doesn’t work. The edited version of that paragraph should read:
Fixed.
TenguPhule
We could put those carriers and spy sats to good use.
celticdragon
Fixed.
Awesome!
The last time I tried to walk through snow with high heels I about killed myself (and that was without any drinking at all), but that’s another story…
Socraticsilence
See, this is just fricking insane, a trained and monitored civil police force still has problems with abuse of asset forfiture laws- people actually basing an entire income model around a combination of that and what scalp-hunting? is a good idea?!
On the other hand it presents an awesome potential income model if it just requires pirate vessels instead of actual pirates- just start buying Somali ships and turnign them for massive profit.
Brachiator
@AhabTRuler:
Colonialism was exploitation. It didn’t build much of anything and led to some of the problems that we still have and this includes Somalia). Also, in the case of Germany, we did not give Germany a government, but allowed them the space to re-create a government and institutions based on what had existed before.
Again, I don’t see that anyone has an answer for failed, or failing nations. Pakistan may become a failed state, even though it has a past of stability and functioning institutions. India, on the other hand, is far more stable, even though both India and Pakistan both were in parts products of British colonialism.
What? What? WTF? This isn’t nation-building. This is rule of a vassal state by an empire. Is this really what you are calling for? Some kind of benign dictatorship? Some kind of neo-colonialism? If so, don’t call it nation-building.
I agree with you here. But neither the US nor the UN nor anyone else has much of an answer here.
LV-426
@celticdragon:
Worked in the war on drugs right?
Won’t this just make piracy profitable for the pirates and whoever gets the billions we spend on this boondoggle?
TenguPhule
Actually, arming civilian ships is a BAD idea for a whole nother set of reasons.
Namely, it makes them legitimate targets in any clash between states & it gives some of these ships ideas about hijacking their competition on the open seas.
Ash Can
@Krista:
My personal version. (Holy crap, did you ever bring back memories for me!)
AhabTRuler
@jibeaux: I am aware of a few Ph.D’s. even brilliant ones, who can be narrow, biased, or wrong, even in their own fields. Especially in Military History.
And furthermore, be very careful when a historian, military or otherwise, gives you advice about the present. The tools that a historian utilizes are often not available for decades after an event occurs.
Given that he thinks it is fairly simple to to use the US Navy to swat pirates, and that he thinks that the accidental killing of innocent fishermen would be a good way to motivate Somalians to push back against the warlords, I’m gonna go with the idiot thing, or at least idiotic, or at least criminally oversimplified.
Admittedly I am being hostile and over harsh, but this dude has the platform, and he is churning out garbage.
AhabTRuler
@Brachiator: Look at India and how many aspects of the Government and society have been strongly influenced by British Custom. Is India a failed state? Was India a state before the British arrived? Was it a nation? Why is the Westminster system one of the most copied forms of representative government?
Don’t mistake me for an apologist for Colonialism or Imperialism, but to say that did not engage in nation-building, however exploitative, is to ignore the political geography of the present day.
BPC
It’s the Navy’s job to act as bodyguards for private shipping companies?
celticdragon
Tenguphule
Uh, you might want to check out what happens to merchant ships in declared wars…
Start with German raiders in WW 1 and proceed.
href="http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/GrafSpee.html" rel="external">
celticdragon
That about does it as I remember…
AhabTRuler
@Wile E. Quixote:
Question: How come if putting a line break between [/p] for one para and the [p] of the next screws up the blockquotes, the system puts one in anyway?
Oh, no! The system is sabotaging itself! Skynet! Skynet! ! !
Polish the Guillotines
@Damned at Random: First of all, that’s a not a great song. It’s a god damned great song. Never heard of him or it before, so thanks. There’s also a link there to Stan and the group singing it live around the kitchen table. Ootstanding.
Not nearly as good, but still cool and somewhat apropos: Shakedown Cruise by Jay Ferguson.
Actually, looking at Jay’s album covers, I think the best way to handle the pirates is to intimidate them with fearsome mustaches.
AhabTRuler
Actually, fighting piracy is considered to be one of the main justifications for and a basic job of navies worldwide.
clone12
it’s another solution where the gains are privatized and the losses are socialized.
If the privateers capture KingPin Bob’s fabulously rich treasure boat, they keep all the treasure. if these same privateers accidentally sink a cruise ship with 1000 tourists, American taxpayers are on the hook for a multi-billion dollar suit.
r€nato
It seems to me that if these shipping companies want the protection of the US Navy, they ought to be flagging more of their ships in the US (and paying taxes which pay for our navy).
The Maersk Alabama was rescued by the US Navy primarily because it was a rarity in overseas shipping: a US-flagged ship with a US citizen as a hostage.
Brachiator
@pto892:
OK. I see what you are saying here. And unfortunately, the answer may be little more than blowing stoned teens out of the water. For now.
The great problems of democracies, and one that many progressives don’t yet understand, is that nation-building, or even promoting stability in failed nations, is damned difficult. And just to be clear, conservatives don’t have an answer to this one either. If anything, they have made things worse with their neo-con fantasies.
Consider, for example, Pakistan, which is cutting deals with the Taliban. This may be a deal with the Devil. On the other hand, US missle attacks within Pakistan may be contributing to the very instability which makes the Taliban appear to be a reasonable alternative. The result: the US may end up with a failed state on its hands, making any resolution in either Pakistan or Afghanistan untenable.
TenguPhule
@celticdragon
Things have changed since then.
Mike in NC
Obviously a masochist, but he did host a good documentary series about wars on PBS a number of years ago.
AhabTRuler
Furthermore, when one writes a paper or a book, one is a Ph.d. and a military historian. When one writes an op-ed, one is merely an asshole with an opinion.
And I still can’t figure out why the Washington Post will give Henry Kissinger 2/3’s of a page when he wants it.
Steve_in_NC
Brilliant English Privateer’s like William Kidd later became pirates. At least they’ll be American pirate’s Arrrgh!
Brachiator
@AhabTRuler:
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here. I think that we both agree that the people of India and Pakistan created their governments, which were based in part on imposed British imperialism. But India not only had a prior tradition of governance, they assumed responsibility for their own future. This is not the same situation as exists in failed states like Somalia, or faltering states such as Zimbabwe.
Some of the models from the past don’t apply as easily to contemporary conditions. Territories which are little more than the domains of warlords, pirates and roving rape gangs are not easy models for nation-building.
jibeaux
@AhabTRuler:
I already admitted I don’t have nearly the knowledge or expertise to have an opinion on whether he’s right or not. I’m just saying it’s a little different than reading, whoever, Kathleen Parker’s, thoughts on the role of our Navy. I give a lot more weight to the naval reserves training than either the doctorate or the military historian, btw.
MNPundit
Look at it this way, maybe the pirates will kill them for us.
JoyceH
@AhabTRuler:
Only question is, why is this the job of the UNITED STATES Navy? This has been a problem for shipping companies for years, but only became an American problem LAST WEEK, which was the first time one of OUR ships was seized. And we handled it. Why do we have to handle it for all these other countries?
When Lebanese and Egyptian ships are seized, how come that’s OUR problem? We’ve sent Egypt between one and two billion in military aid every year for over twenty years – what have they done with it?
This problem has been growing for years, and it’s been growing because all the other shipping countries apparently decided that they’d rather pay ransom than deal with the issue, with the result that the pirates have made millions of dollars, allowing them to become better armed and better equipped and better manned.
So why is it our problem? Is our own military sitting around all bored because they don’t have enough to do? How about all these other countries who’ve let this get so out of hand commit some of their own forces to the issue?
...now I try to be amused
The Bushies were well on their way to feudalism, by this criterion:
"…the historian F.L. Ganshof discerned in feudal society one basic quality: ‘a dispersal of political authority amongst a hierarchy of of persons who exercise in their own interest powers normally attributed to the state.’ In other words, the public interest had become private."
— Cullen Murphy, from Are We Rome?
RememberNovember
So when we decide to form a treaty or alliance with said pirates then can we hang those privateers (like Capt. Kidd) for not getting the email in time?
Batshit crazy has become the new normal.
cyd
Pirates of Black Water.
Damned at Random
Polish the Guillotines-
You are right, of course, my recommendation was somewhat understated. I’m always happy to introduce someone to Stan Rogers (who died much too young) and the Friends of Fiddler’s Green (who were wonderful when I saw them in the mid-80s in Ontario).
Sorry to hear about your smashed-face kitty, by the way. My vet used to tell me the last kindness we can show them is a painless passing – but it is still hard to do. You made the right decision.
RememberNovember
@celticdragon:
and they’ve shown remarkable restraint and professional ethos in doing their work in Iraq, haven’t they.
They’re all Chuck Norris wannabes. With real guns, and itchy trigger fingers. Yeah that’s worked out real well for vigilante justice cause over the years.
/headdesk.
RememberNovember
@celticdragon:
heh, got some friends who do a great version of the
http://www.crimsonpirates.com
also another friend does a filk verion a la POTC theme.
celticdragon
@RememberNovember
Heh! They look like a hoot!
I’ll have to hear some of their stuff.
pto892
@JoyceH:
Actually, that’s a good point. Egypt is one of the nations most affected by the piracy problem since quite a few of the ships that have been seized passed through or are planning to pass through the Suez Canal. Which is one of their main sources of revenue-it’s not in their interest to have shipping routed around the Cape.
The Lounsbury
@JoyceH:
Perhaps you might want to investigage global supply chains and the impact on American commercial interests. Or update your understanding of the term "flag of convenience"
You can be assured actual Liberian, Panamanian etc. citizens are not the beneficial owners of the shipping, whatever the legal vehicle of convenience.
Spent it on American equipment intended for their direct usage, and not force projection thousands of kilometres away.
And done very much as the Americans told them.
It would be the US that freaks out when other nations develop force projection.
Live by the Imperial Policy…. pay for the Imperial Policy.
Rather idiotic to whinge on about what US itself has imposed.
Countries do not ship, in general companies do. It’s a commercial transaction. Were there a better organised pirate union, one would simply pay passage fees.
Jeff
Is this like the American Enterprise Institute, only stupider? I wouldn’t have thought possible!
Obviously, the answer to my question is "Yes". Gurggh!
Wile E. Quixote
@Jeff
CEI is AEI, junior varsity. It makes me wonder though, how could I set up my own think tank and get gullible wingnuts to hand me serious amounts of cash to say things so ridiculously stupid that I would have to shoot novocaine into my face in order to not break out laughing.
COMMONSENSE
@Nikki:
Theese pirates are not only theives, they are terrorists who currently have 300 honest hardworking human being hostages and millions of dollars worth of cargo in their dirty rotten dark skinned hands being held for ransom, how do you think those hostages are being treated? what if it was one of your family members being held? have you even heard of a plan by the affected countries to retrieve those hostages? (PAY THEM FOR THOSE HOSTAGES THEN KEEP THEM FROM GETTING MORE) something needs to be done now before they keep getting more hostages and cargo:FYI- 4 more ships were seized today and one failed attempt on another american vessel. The company’s and groups that are shipping in this region would be more than willing to pay a private protection company to secure its assets from theese pirates at least temporarilly until the governments figure out a way to secure theese waterways and difuse the problem. I agree that american taxpayer money and recources that are needed elsewhere should not be the main or only source to put a stop to this, all parties involved should do their part. The ships should be equipped with detourants such as an electrical exterior fencing sheild so they cant climb aboard, they should have a secure area for the crew that would be extremely impossible to access under an attack, with an under attack notifying system to bring on the pirate police, they can have boobie trap areas that lock them in and gas them, the amount of things the ship owners and owners of the assets aboard can do to detour theese people are up to the imagination and pocketbooks but im sure it would be cheaper than paying ransoms and losing lives. In the case of them using rockets etc… each ship should be allowed to be armed with at least 1 high powerd night vision machine gun touret and hired gunmen if fired upon or refuse to retreat, they can use detourants first as a warning, depth charges, warning shots from machine gun, loud speaker with distict warnings, tear gas, there is allot of product out there. What they need first is a laser detection and or sound anylyzer system that will notify the ship of an incoming boat of any size that will give them fair warning to launch detourants and warnings. what about small laser guided torpedoes to sink their boat then chum the water around them and let mother nature take over, they will be begging for us to take them hostage which is another issue, theese people are terrorists and we should not have to pay for theese peoples meal ticket for the rest of their lives in prison, all we need is another guantanimo. Once the somalis that are joining theese pirate missions know what is going to happen to them they will have a hard time finding any recruits. If you attack a ship with cargo with intent to hold for ransom or just to steal it the penalty is death upon attempt of attack, or sunk at sea and left for the sharks. Reform in the country is another issue that needs to be put into place somehow in order for theese people to keep from doing such drastic measures to survive, trust me I feel bad for theese people but attacking theese ships is a form of terrorism that affects economy’s worldwide and puts the shipping industry, import export markets and global markets in jeporady. So to make a long story shorter> IMPLEMENT NEW RULES FOR WEAPONS AND DEFENSE IN THEESE WATERS-WARN THEM OF THE NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOME IF THEY ATTEMPT TO SEIZE A VESSEL-IMMEDIATELY HIRE AND IMPLEMENT PRIVATE MILITARY SUPPORT COMPANYS AND JOINT MILITARY EFFORTS FROM SUPPORTING GOVERNMENTS-EQUIP VESSELS WITH DETECTION EQUIPMENT, DETOURANTS, SPECILALY TRAINED SECURITY OFFICER TO GAURD AND IMPLEMENT DETOURANTS AND WEAPONS-INSTALL SAFE ROOM FOR CREW. HAVE A 911 TYPE SYSTEM FOR FAST RESPONSE OF SUPPORT-HAVE THE SAUDIS PAY THE BILL…HEHE-REFORM THE COUNTRY THROUGH POLITICS.
commonsense
@Llelldorin: Theese pirates are not only theives, they are terrorists who currently have 300 honest hardworking human being hostages and millions of dollars worth of cargo in their dirty rotten dark skinned hands being held for ransom, how do you think those hostages are being treated? what if it was one of your family members being held? have you even heard of a plan by the affected countries to retrieve those hostages? (PAY THEM FOR THOSE HOSTAGES THEN KEEP THEM FROM GETTING MORE) something needs to be done now before they keep getting more hostages and cargo:FYI- 4 more ships were seized today and one failed attempt on another american vessel. The company’s and groups that are shipping in this region would be more than willing to pay a private protection company to secure its assets from theese pirates at least temporarilly until the governments figure out a way to secure theese waterways and difuse the problem. I agree that american taxpayer money and recources that are needed elsewhere should not be the main or only source to put a stop to this, all parties involved should do their part. The ships should be equipped with detourants such as an electrical exterior fencing sheild so they cant climb aboard, they should have a secure area for the crew that would be extremely impossible to access under an attack, with an under attack notifying system to bring on the pirate police, they can have boobie trap areas that lock them in and gas them, the amount of things the ship owners and owners of the assets aboard can do to detour theese people are up to the imagination and pocketbooks but im sure it would be cheaper than paying ransoms and losing lives. In the case of them using rockets etc… each ship should be allowed to be armed with at least 1 high powerd night vision machine gun touret and hired gunmen if fired upon or refuse to retreat, they can use detourants first as a warning, depth charges, warning shots from machine gun, loud speaker with distict warnings, tear gas, there is allot of product out there. What they need first is a laser detection and or sound anylyzer system that will notify the ship of an incoming boat of any size that will give them fair warning to launch detourants and warnings. what about small laser guided torpedoes to sink their boat then chum the water around them and let mother nature take over, they will be begging for us to take them hostage which is another issue, theese people are terrorists and we should not have to pay for theese peoples meal ticket for the rest of their lives in prison, all we need is another guantanimo. Once the somalis that are joining theese pirate missions know what is going to happen to them they will have a hard time finding any recruits. If you attack a ship with cargo with intent to hold for ransom or just to steal it the penalty is death upon attempt of attack, or sunk at sea and left for the sharks. Reform in the country is another issue that needs to be put into place somehow in order for theese people to keep from doing such drastic measures to survive, trust me I feel bad for theese people but attacking theese ships is a form of terrorism that affects economy’s worldwide and puts the shipping industry, import export markets and global markets in jeporady. So to make a long story shorter> IMPLEMENT NEW RULES FOR WEAPONS AND DEFENSE IN THEESE WATERS-WARN THEM OF THE NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOME IF THEY ATTEMPT TO SEIZE A VESSEL-IMMEDIATELY HIRE AND IMPLEMENT PRIVATE MILITARY SUPPORT COMPANYS AND JOINT MILITARY EFFORTS FROM SUPPORTING GOVERNMENTS-EQUIP VESSELS WITH DETECTION EQUIPMENT, DETOURANTS, SPECILALY TRAINED SECURITY OFFICER TO GAURD AND IMPLEMENT DETOURANTS AND WEAPONS-INSTALL SAFE ROOM FOR CREW. HAVE A 911 TYPE SYSTEM FOR FAST RESPONSE OF SUPPORT-HAVE THE SAUDIS PAY THE BILL…HEHE-REFORM THE COUNTRY THROUGH POLITICS.
The Lounsbury
Ah advice in all caps.
Always a sign of well-thought out, practical thinking. ….
DPirate
If arming merchant ships were good business, they would all be armed already. That they aren’t should say something.
Typically, there exists at least one handgun in possession of the captain, to be used against the crew in case of mutiny or derangement, and there may indeed exist a weapons locker of small arms for the use of the crew in emergencies, but that’s about it.
Shipping companies will farm out security contracts for the same reason a mall hires Wackenhut. Who wants to train the shoe salesman to fire missiles and machineguns?
DPirate
@The Lounsbury
You can also be assured that ships are not owned by the american public, either. APMoller-Maersk is itself a northern european company, and while they have taken over some of the larger US shipping companies, I believe the majority of their ships are not flagged in the US. Additionally, most of their ships are not built in america. However, the USN is owned by the american public.
The Lounsbury
Yes, you have made some rather trivially obvious observations. American governmental policy has managed to, by crude and primitive protectionism, kill off most of its shipping industry (that is as directly incorporated in the US and flagged under US law, equity ownership is another matter).
US commercial interests do have an interest in cost-effective shipping. It is not merely the bloody ships, but what’s being transported on them that can motivate.
dude
I too can see some problems in this, but you need to understand, Ron Paul abides strictly by the constitution, and
this would be constitutional. I see the possible legal implications involved in this solution, as well as diplomatic problems; put I personally see the motives of an individual much less dangerous than the governments.