Trickery at sea
An interesting bit of moral idiocy:
[T]he Somali pirate commander warned against any forcible intervention. “I’m afraid this matter is likely to create disaster because it is taking too long and we are getting information that the Americans are planning rescue tricks like the French commandos did,” Abdi Garad said.
Tricks. That’s good, isn’t it? People attempting to rescue a guy being forcibly held by heavily armed thieves are accused by the thieves of planning ‘tricks.’ The pirates inform all parties a week in advance that they will be seizing their ships and threatening their lives, do they? All open and aboveboard? All strictly according to Hoyle?
Right.
Well, they are pirates.
So “tricks” is another word not allowed in the OB lexicon. Yet the pirates believe they have legitimate reasons for their piracy.
Yes that’s right, and I have global power to enforce ‘my’ lexicon. I’m a ball-breaking Feminazi pussy, too, so I’ll do it; better watch out.
People always ‘believe’ they have ‘legitimate reasons’ for pushing other people around; so what?
The “so what” is that it pays to understands an adversary’s state-of-mind or at least its recent history.
On a case-by-case basis I have no sympathy for the pirates.
But it is interesting to learn (insofar as hanmeng’s links are accurate) why there are Somali pirates now but apparently not 25 years ago and one wonders “why?”
Yes that’s one ‘so what,’ but who knows if it’s hanmeng’s. hanmeng is a sloppy reader and a putter of words in my mouth, so I suspect hanmeng’s ‘so what’ is something more tendentious than that.
Its late so I won’t go into detail but many Somalis see themselves not as pirates but as righteous defenders of their nation’s sovereignty against Western exploitation and interference.
http://punkscientist.blogspot.com/2009/04/craig-murray-and-somali-coast-guard.html
Some, admittedly, do see themselves as pirates though.
The I.R.A used to see themselves as defenders of the Irish people but it didnt change the fact that they were a bunch of ruthless killers.
Didn’t Julius Caesar and Pompey have something to teach us here?
At the same time as we are killing pirates we should try to understand why they exist now but didn’t 25 years ago. Here is a sentence from today’s WaPo which demands elaboration/substantiation:
“Fishermen, complaining of widespread illegal fishing in their waters, began seizing trawlers as an act of defiance but soon found they had stumbled onto a lucrative business.”
;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/13/AR2009041300671.html?hpid=topnews
People see themselves as all sorts of things; that by itself tells us very little.
Well, they are pirates but they do not seem to be particularly brutal or cruel, in contrast to many contemporary or recent oportunistic pirates.
They simply don’t compare to the fishermen/pirates who preyed on the boat-people from Vietnam and Cambodia. Vicious bastards that they were.
I’m inclined to have a certain sympathy for their position. They are desperate and driven into a corner, they are probably decent people who would rather be making an honest living in a governable land and who do not have a sophisticated manifesto.
Hari’s article in particular gives an interesting perspective. If it is true that Somalia’s lack of a viable government means that certain powerful entities see Somalia as a convenient place to raid and dump on, then why wouldn’t the local population see pirates as Robin Hood figures? Why wouldn’t they see themselves as such?Especially, as seems to be the case, if they spread the loot around.
I’d be very uncomfortable with a hard line military response to this problem.
Just because you’re a pirate, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.
Don even if it is true about waste dumping ect,does that make it somehow o.k to hold inocent merchant seaman at gun point for several days? Using your logic it would be alright for me to mug a stranger if my house was burgled.