So let’s see review. The EU forms a task force of warships to combat piracy. The pirates attack one of the warships(!), are defeated and captured (hooray!). They are charged with possession of firearms (Gun control on the high seas! That’ll do it!), and with attacking a French warship (“Nivose” means “snowflake”). So they are turned over to…Kenya! (I’m running out of exclamation points.)
And the Greeks have apparently paid a ransom to the pirates to get their ship back. (What else explains it? Were the pirates getting tired of Greek food?)
How well is the EU plan working? The bottom line: 18 ships still being held. Justice in the hands of the Kenyan courts, which may be the best in the world, for all I know. (I’m sure our Supreme Court pays close attention to Kenyan precedent.) But why didn’t the French haul them back to France? Or sink them, for that matter?
In our last story, the pirates were only holding 17 ships. Now we buy one back, and they’re holding 18. One ship forward, two ships back, I guess.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We are all getting a taste of a world with no cops, just a gaggle of Euro-crossing guards. And it isn’t pretty.
More Pirates Disarmed, Released
(May 2, 2009)
It’s happened again.
NATO Thwarts Hijacking Off Somalia, Seizes Dynamite
by Katherine Houreld, AP writer
My summary: NATO ship (Portuguese, this time) captures pirates armed with dynamite, takes away dynamite, releases pirates. (No mention of a stern lecture, but we can hope.)
My summary of second paragraph: Hours later, other pirates (presumably not the same ones), hijacked another cargo ship. Somali pirates are now holding 17 ships and 300 crew.
17 ships! Soft power on the high seas!
Check out our earlier post “Pirates Given Stern Lecture, Then Released” below.
I am seriously considering piracy as a career. It is potentially VERY lucrative, and the risks appear lower than those of a small-town cop. Plus it is as romantic as any job can be. Want to impress the girls in a bar? Tell them you are a PIRATE! Watch the insurance salesmen and hedge-fund traders slink away in shame.
I joke. But this situation is a pathetic and embarassing display of material power unsupported by the will to use it. Isn’t this a subject Obama should address? But then, the US is just one of 190 equal nations. Let Portugal deal with it.
As I said earlier, we don’t want to be the cops of the world. But we are all getting some clear lessons in life in a world without cops, only Dutch, Canadian, and Portuguese crossing guards.
Pirates Given Stern Lecture, Then Released
(April 20, 2009)
OK, here is a priceless news story from the West’s War On Piracy.
“NATO ships, helicopters hunt down 7 pirates”
The story, dated 19 April, 2009, describes an unsuccessful pirate attack, a pursuit by 2 NATO ships, and then:
“Both ships deployed helicopters, and naval officers hailed the pirates over loudspeakers and finally fired warning shots to stop them, Fernandes said, but not before the pirates had dumped most of their weapons overboard. NATO forces boarded the skiff, where they found a rocket-propelled grenade, and interrogated, disarmed and released the pirates.
“The pirates cannot be prosecuted under Canadian law because they did not attack Canadian citizens or interests and the crime was not committed on Canadian territory.
“When a ship is part of NATO, the detention of person is a matter for the national authorities,” Fernandes said. “It stops being a NATO issue and starts being a national issue.”
Here’s another one, same day:
“NATO ship foils pirates, frees hostages in Gulf of Aden”
By Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, April 19th 2009, 4:00 AM
NATO“Hostages and pirates stand with arms raised before Dutch NATO commandos chased pirates back to their ‘mother ship.’”
“Pirates trying to hijack a tanker in the Gulf of Aden on Saturday were foiled by Dutch commandos who chased them to their “mother ship” and freed 20 fishermen the brigands were holding captive.
“In another day of dramatic pirate battles off the coast of Somalia, thugs firing small arms and rockets began attacking Greek tanker Handytankers Magic just after dawn.
“Special forces from NATO-flagged Dutch Navy frigate The Seven Provinces swooped in to defend the tanker and pursued the fleeing pirates to a large Yemeni fishing boat.
“The Dutch commandos found 20 fishermen, all believed to be Yemeni, captive in the hold.
“The boat had been hijacked a week ago and was being used by the Somali pirates as a base to launch attacks on cargo ships.
“The commandos freed the fishermen, seized seven AK-47 assault rifles and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher and briefly detained seven pirates. The pirates had to be set free because NATO has no power to detain maritime suspects.”
Bottom line: Europe (and possibly now America) are now truly committed to a legalistic, constitutional-rights-protected, police response to every attack, from terrorism to piracy to direct military attacks on our soil. We would do well to recall Supreme Court Justice Jackson’s (dissenting) comment in the 1930′s Terminiello case, that “the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.” War cannot be waged by policemen armed with Miranda cards; the UN has tried that many times, from watching genocide in Rwanda to watching rocket attacks on the Lebanon-Israel border.
Obama got off to a good start on confronting pirates, using the right kind of diplomatic negotiations (“Saying ‘Nice doggie’, while looking around for a rock.”) Now he needs to step up to the big question: Who polices the seas? In the past, the answer was simple, whether it was piracy or the slave trade: the dominant navy.
We all learned the clever line from the Vietnam War that “we can’t be the cops of the world.” What we haven’t yet learned is the true nature of a world without cops, with only Dutch and Canadian crossing guards.
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