Slate’s Daniel Politi on the day after Captain Phillips’s rescue by sharpshooters and the crew of the Bainbridge (link and emphasis mine):
The American service members acted when the pirates appeared to be getting nervous and recognizing they they had no way out. The LAT talks to one elder in the port city of Eyl, a pirate haven, who says the pirates had dropped their demands for a ransom and were only asking for a way to escape.
USAT notes that yesterday “marked the first time an American president had acted against maritime marauders since Thomas Jefferson ordered Marines to the shores of Tripoli to fight the Barbary pirates.” In a piece inside, the WP points out that the standoff was “one of the earliest tests” for Obama. It was a military operation that paled in comparison with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that didn’t make it inconsequential for a president “who had yet to prove himself to this generals or his public.” Seemingly aware of the risk, the White House had been busy playing down Obama’s role in the operation. That is, until it all went well and administration officials couldn’t stop talking about how often the president was briefed on the situation and how he was the one who gave the go-ahead for the rescue operation. Although the WP may have gotten caught up in the exuberance of the moment when it declares that Obama’s actions “could help build confidence in his ability to direct military actions abroad,” the truth is that it’s hard to see how things could have gone better for the young president.
There’s now widespread concern that yesterday’s rescue operation could make the piracy situation off the coast of Somalia worse. “This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it,” Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said. The LAT notes that pirates warned yesterday that they would be increasing their efforts to seize ships and wouldn’t hesitate to kill hostages if they ever felt as though their lives were in danger. The NYT points out that at least one Somali pirate has vowed to take revenge on the next American captured at sea. In a separate story inside, the NYT says the events of the past week have reignited discussions over whether the crew of commercial ships should be armed. Many ship owners continue to be reluctant to follow this path, fearing that it would merely make the high seas more dangerous, particularly since pirates “will always be able to buy larger weapons than ship owners in any maritime arms race.”
Round-up of blogger reax from Smitty at Stacy’s.
This is why widespread concern ought to be dismissed. If you’ll recall, the pirates early on stated that they had no fear of the Americans. The LAT and others can worry about whether this is going to create an arms race between commercial ships and Somali pirates, but that doesn’t take into account cruise missiles fired into pirate districts. This is a familiar lefty meme that’s being bandied about: killing pirates actually increases their numbers, just as killing terrorists does.
The Somali government, whatever that might be, was invited to intervene to create a peaceful resolution to the crisis, but balked at the idea of arresting the pirates, presumably on the basis that piracy is a protected economic activity there that they have no interest in discouraging. I think that a clever leader would find a way to make the proposition less attractive.
UPDATE: Apparently Captain Phillips had gone over the side to piss.
As I noted in comment to previous thread … this is all Bush’s fault.
The next step should be sending in fighter jets to smoke all the boats in the harbors. One harbor at a time. The means of this “criminal” enterprise need to be taken out.
Okay, this is something I do not want Obama to fail at.
I like how the concern immediately turns to what the pirates will do next.
They should be concerned about what we will do next, and the fact that isn’t reported is disturbing.
Carin. Yep. Bush’s fault. How could it be anything else? Another crisis inhereted that Team Obama needed to clean up. Cheney too.
Can’t wait for the Somali Sea-faring Wealth Redistributing Community Mourns Dead articles. Be pretty much like the dead Hamas terrorist ones, I suppose.
Did the Commander-in-Chief greenlight this operation, or was done on the Navy’s own authority?
Somewhere an elephant has squashed a mosquito with its trunk. Chief of mosquitos vows swift and painful retaliation.
Brett, my best information says that after two days and the first escape attempt by Phillips, Obama gave the green light for an action at the discretion of the Captain of the Bainbridge. The Captain of the Bainbridge told the marksmen, including those who’d been parachuted in, that they had the green light to act if Phillips’s life seemed in immediate peril. The 3 pirates who were killed (the youngster who had the icepick thrust through his hand having already surrendered in effect) all had AK-47s aimed at Phillips before he went over the side the second time. At the time, the lifeboat was being towed about 25 meters behind the Bainbridge. When one of the pirates looked to be taking a bead on Phillips back, the sharpshooters fired and killed them.
Various people have ridiculed the idea of the Bainbridge towing the pirates and their captive to calmer water, but that can only have helped the sharpshooters.
Note that the West can make bad decisions that only make things worse (conveniently no matter what those decisions are, short of abject surrender, there’s some Lefty handy to propound a theory to that effect), while the Noble Savages can only react, having no agency of their own nor responsibility for their actions.
It’s time that the pirates start thinking about how their actions can make things worse.
Brett
It’s being reported that Obama gave the go ahead to use whatever force was necessary to protect Capt. Phillips if the Navy felt his life was in imminent danger. Obama is a horrible President, but I’m with Joe here: he made the right call in this instance. I suppose we’ll find out just how serious the President really is about protecting American lives in that area the next time a US vessel is attacked, but the way this situation worked out can be described as nothing short of a win.
Hammer time: Peres: “We’ll strike him.”…
Israel is getting fed up with Iran’s increasingly menacing progress in acquiring nuclear weaponry…
President Shimon Peres had some unusually aggressive words for Iran Sunday, seemingly threatening military action if US President Barack Obam…
Thanks Dan and holy goat. It was an honest question as to facts I hadn’t seen reported yet. O got this one right.
As the leader of the Left, Obama must at all times be seen as doing exactly the correct thing. Like Caesar’s wife, he must always present to the public the aura of immaculate perfection.
If a choice goes well it will have been his decision from the beginning. When it doesn’t end well some lower level being gets to fall on his sword for the impudence of acting against the express orders of the immaculate one.
The media is going to build an interesting, complex, and tangled web of words in the coming years to keep our whoring Caesar’s wife pure.
He got it right? Who wouldn’t have? Perhaps not Jimmy, but the bar is low for that one.
Unless a nation is prepared to hand out those paper thingies with seals of wax that make those cutthroats our pirates, history has pretty much dictated that the only way to deal with a pirate scourge is maximum force applied until the pirates decide that farming or basket weaving may be a safer profession.
Of course the pirate situation will get worse after the US and France’s actions. The key is to not listen to the clueless hacks who think this will be a bad thing. On the contrary, the best thing that could happen for the whole situation would be for the pirates to escalate, which gives more than adequate rhetorical cover to blow them the hell away. You see, they do not have nearly the resources or equipment to really escalate and a joint mission with air power and stand off ships will be quite capable of demonstrating to these scum the real meaning of escalation.
Again, it all comes down to demonstrating the short term liabilities of ones chosen profession and firmly nudging them to another occupation.
Good Allah, how racist can y’all be?!
“The 3 pirates who were killed (the youngster who had the icepick thrust through his hand having already surrendered in effect) all had AK-47s aimed at Phillips before he went over the side the second time.”
As Mel Gibson would say: “Semi-Stigmata!”
More Somaili Pirates to deal with. God, they are everywhere!
Charles Johnson makes you want to disagree with him.
Not about congratulating Obama. I am glad he did the right thing and believe we should congratulate and encourage him to do the right thing in situations like this. Credit of course goes to the Navy for pulling it off, but Obama had the good sense to green light it.
So thanks for the snark Charles J. When you find someone criticizing Obama over this, let us know. Until then, try painting with a finer brush.
Did the Navy really have to go to Barcky twice for authorization to use force, and then only get it when there was “imminent” danger?
Even a blind pig will find a truffle. Obama is craven, arrogant, vain and greedy but not stupid. He waited two days of bound to fail negotiations before he let the Navy do its job. Good on him that his leftist anti-military instincts were beaten down by the prospect that Phillips dying at the hands of the pirates would have made bad press for him. Of course The One also hedged his bets even in his congratulatory statement since he never says “The United States government policy is to not negotiate.â€
The true heroes here are the Navy sharpshooters and their Captain. And Phillips is one brave man.
Amen, Darleen. That’s how I feel. Obama said yes, but what other option did he have?
*Amen, Darleen. That’s how I feel. Obama said yes, but what other option did he have?*
I’m betting the teleprompter actually said “yes” and Obama just passed on the message. TOTUS is badass.
Obama murdered those brown people just as if he had pulled the trigger himself. (Not that he would ever touch an evil gun, mind you.)
ALL BECAUSE OF A WHITE MAN!!111eleventy!
Still the “pirate stronghold of Eyl” to deal with. That’s where the “pirate source” that Rooters has been using is located.
1 ea. standard smoking hole, please.
I’ve just opened a new amusement ride in my back yard:
Somali Pirates of Eyl
You sit between to dummies in a row boat on my pond (the dummies heads are acorn squashes with M80s inside). The heads blow up and you jump out. Awesome!
“I like how the concern immediately turns to what the pirates will do next.”
I can only hope it will be a mixture of screaming in alarm and pain as some sort of ordnance lands on/near them or glub-glub-glubbing under the waves.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aYhvgOfyTmYA
Oh well, so much for the hope I expressed in #27…
Pirates aren’t the biggest deal in the world unless they take you captive, which is very very unlikely.
From LTC John’s link:
Arrgh! It’s always about Teh Poverties with these people! Feel free to help the Somali Government and people out but please, please, please blow the pirates to hell who are a bit more than just hopeless brown people beaten down by Teh Poverties and merely trying to earn a living wage.
Jeez!
That was a pirate “Arrgh!” by the way.
Check out this nonsesnse: http://holycoast.blogspot.com/2009/04/wacky-left-blames-captain-phillips-for.html
Over on… another site… I predicted that within a week the surviving pirate would be the next “Mumia.”
In the same thread some dimwit claimed the pirates were “nice” to have taken only one hostage. Maybe we should send them a nice pan of brownies to say thanks.
Used to be, to get the USA to send you billions, you had to have a war.
Now, you just need to get some volunteers to get their melons popped in a hostage takedown.
I guess we will send them some food and stuff. Which, by the way, was what was on board the Alabama.
Roland — what baffled me, throughout all of the “negotiations” was the refusal to make an issue of that. The first thing the Somali government did was start whining about the delay in landing the aid supplies: my FIRST position would have been, “the Alabama goes nowhere and lands NOTHING until we get Phillips back unharmed, and you had better get someone out in a boat to explain that in words of one syllable to your charmless nationals. We don’t care who starves, or in what quantities, and if anything goes wrong and Phillips should sustain harm, your chances for any future aid of any kind at any time just went down the toilet.” I wish someone would explain to me why this wasn’t an option. Except, of course, that I know. Dammit. As surely as I know that we’ll do penance for those 3 assholes with lots more wasted food and other aid to that toilet kleptocracy in the coming eternal 33 months.
Used to be, to get the USA to send you billions, you had to have a war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared
I’m still laughing at all this “elders” crap. And I’d love to read Jeff’s take on it.
I think that an arrogant assignment of authenticity and authority is inherent in the word’s usage. In the minds of today’s “small-worlders” (ie. multi-cultural Left, “progressives,” Congressional Black Caucus) the simple act of wearing a label with the word “elder” on it should attract immediate, unquestioned respect and attention. The category connotes both an irrefutable wisdom, and a degree of unarguable victimhood – such as that suffered by anyone that is over thirty and living in a poverty-stricken desert strand along Africa’s East coast.
“He’s a ‘Somali Elder,’ dammit, so, of course he’s telling the truth. His credential conveys superior status. Paper beats stone. You lose.” Or, so the authoritarians want the story to go.
And because the small-worlders’ exhibit the frequent habit of founding “authority” based on amplified racist (or as is the habit in the southern hemisphere’s political discourse, colonial) victimhood, this means that authors resorting to using the anthropological term “elders” when reporting on controversial matters are insisting that the argument, what ever it is about to be, is over before it’s even begun…lest the Elders’ opponent will uffer accusations of racism, and of “dissin'” an elder, or worse.
“You wouldn’t want a cruise missile to hit an “elder” wearing glasses, now would you, Whitey?”
Good news: Frank J. has named Obama “President of the Day”!
http://www.imao.us/index.php/2009/04/imaos-president-of-the-day-barack-obama/
*Under discussion are ways to send more direct food and agricultural aid to the country, the defense officials said. *
So we’re rewarding a country for doing nothing to stop piracy, resulting directly in an attack on an american ship ?
I was all for John’s suggestion on follow-up ordinance. I can’t imagine we can’t determine where these flag challenged seaman are based and/or coming from.
On the upside, apparently the white house thinks this will make a great movie. Rush suggested the movie star Will Smith as Obama, who will also star as Obama, the leader of the navy seals who facilitated the rescue.
Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity and Rush will be playing the pirates.
let me be frank: Im proud Obama did what he had to do.
Let me be super double frank: I think Obama had another 24 hours to do something before he was faced with civil uproar.
Every democrat is faced with the legacy of Jimmy Carter: that he/she is an unreconstructed pussy who is afraid of offending the sensibilities of both the Harvard Yard set and the Europeans.
To not face down this specter is to consign the Dems to another decade or so on the sidelines.
Limbaugh as mere pirate? Given that Limbaugh’s “I hope He fails” seems to be bearing fruit, I think Rush should play the Puppeteer.
Other than to delay allowing the pros to do what they are experts at, I do not see what Barcky did that is so exceptional. I did not get to see his press conference about this today? Is it safe to assume that he lauded praise upon himself?
Bullshit, McGruder.
Obama did what he always does: held out until the situation allowed the Press to deflect any criticism and award any possible praise.
As it is, a simple nod of the head to allow the Navy to do its f*ing job is being turned into a Miracle of Statesmanship.
Had Phillips been shot in the melee, Teh News would be full of denunciations of trigger-happy militarist goons who exceeded Teh One’s clear instructions, complete with fulsome praise of the “measured response” commanded which was short-circuited by warmongering opportunists.
Regards,
Ric
JD:Other than to delay allowing the pros to do what they are experts at, I do not see what Barcky did that is so exceptional.
Ya think a light bulb went on when Phillip’s first tried to escape – yeah, oh duh, maybe he’s trying to give us an opportunity to shoot the pirates?
Methinks that Barcky is quite fortunate that Phillips tried to escape again.
**
Q: How long will they blame George Bush?
A: Until there is another Republican President they can blame in his place.
Yeah, He missed His first chance, but I’ll give Barak a “pass” on this test – only because I’m an Affirmative Action kind of guy.
It never takes long for the MSM and the Dems to blame Bush for this.
I’d love to hear Sen. Feingold’s idea of “not making the same mistake”. Transfer payments? Direct food aid and agricultural specialits?
I’m for sinking pirate ships, blowing up pirate bases and killing pirates until nobody thinks ‘Say, I should get some guys together and go out and steal and kidnap out on the ocean!’
Pirates: aka freelance socialists.
Pirates: aka “social entrepreneurs”?
h/t [Socialist] National Service Bill
The Late Great Sam Kinison:
“I’m like anyone else on this planet — I’m very moved by world hunger. I see the same commercials, with those little kids, starving, and very depressed. I watch those kids and I go, ‘F–k, I know the FILM crew could give this kid a sandwich!’ There’s a director five feet away going, ‘DON’T FEED HIM YET! GET THAT SANDWICH OUTTA HERE! IT DOESN’T WORK UNLESS HE LOOKS HUNGRY!!!’ But I’m not trying to make fun of world hunger. Matter of fact, I think I have the answer. You want to stop world hunger? Stop sending these people food. Don’t send these people another bite, folks. You want to send them something, you want to help? Send them U-Hauls. Send them U-Hauls, some luggage, send them a guy out there who says, ‘Hey, we been driving out here every day with your food, for, like, the last thirty or forty years, and we were driving out here today across the desert, and it occurred to us that there wouldn’t BE world hunger, if you people would LIVE WHERE THE FOOD IS! YOU LIVE IN A DESERT! YOU LIVE IN A F–KING DESERT! NOTHING GROWS OUT HERE! NOTHING’S GONNA GROW OUT HERE! YOU SEE THIS? HUH? THIS IS SAND. KNOW WHAT IT’S GONNA BE A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW? IT’S GONNA BE SAND! YOU LIVE IN A F–KING DESERT! GET YOUR STUFF, GET YOUR SHIT, WE’LL MAKE ONE TRIP, WE’LL TAKE YOU TO WHERE THE FOOD IS! WE HAVE DESERTS IN AMERICA — WE JUST DON’T LIVE IN THEM, A–HOLES!”
#
Comment by mojo on 4/13 @ 12:11 pm #
Greatest.
Rant.
Ever.
Ric, he authorized the attack on these scumbags.
he did so late, but he did so.
The Navy doesnt have a mandate to start offensive action unless they have been ordered to.
If he takes credit for it then hes just a politician, like all the others. You know, “Mission Accomplished” and all that. they are all the same, right and left, every last one of them. the Navy Seals or other super well-trained hero types put their asses on the line and die, sooner or later, anonymously. Obama, or some other machine pol merely says, “Do what you have to” and if it works out, he goes into the history books as a hero.
Im less of a fan of Obama than I was of Bush, but I do recall that a few US pilots spent an extended period of time as guests of the Chinese after a recon flight was forced to land. After slapping us around and apologizing, publicly and privately, they were allowed to leave. Hizbollah had a frigging growth industry in the 80s capturing Americans, torturing more than a few of them. These situations are nasty and ugly and leave a superpower with one hand tied to its nuts.
Re: Feingold. Pure, unalloyed white trash. If you have a better way of putting it, then have at it.
The difference isn’t in the politicians, McGruder.
In the instances you cite, I don’t recall a Press reaction complimenting the President on having managed the greatest diplomatic or military response evah.
Regards,
Ric
This really isn’t that big a deal I don’t think. It was a slow news Easter. We now return you to our regularly scheduled dirty socialist spring already in progress.
Really? The Navy can’t do anything to protect lives in imminent danger unless ordered to do so?
In reality, hostage-takings only tie our hands if we insist on minimal loss of lives. If we reacted with a “oh, shit, sorry” to the next of kin and then flattened the home town of the hostage-takers, hostage-taking would quickly be part of history.
We’ve forgotten that it’s a hard world, and it’s just going to get harder because of our amnesia.
(But, hey, at least we’re not so far gone as the British. The Royal Navy will not take part in anti-piracy operations for fear of pirates claiming amnesty.)
I’m for sinking pirate ships, blowing up pirate bases and killing pirates until nobody thinks ‘Say, I should get some guys together and go out and steal and kidnap out on the ocean!’
Not very creative LTC John. Not very think outside the box.
Effective as all hell, but no points for originality.
Bunk.
Anyone suggesting that we cannot take action, or must wait for explicit athorization, when life, limb, or eyesight is at stake, can kindly get bent.
So there you have it. Thet’s preemtively blow everyone out of the water and start over again.
STFU, cynn. The proper methods for handling pirates have been settled law for centuries (if not longer — ISTR Gaius Julius Caesar doing some anti-piracy work). We’ve abandoned those methods, and now we’re paying the price.
This word preemptively, I do not think it means what you think it does.
Rob,
Gnaeus Pompieus Magnus got in before G. J. Ceasar did…heh.
Cynn,
Pre-emptively? Perhaps you missed the fact that pirates have been operating off the Horn of Africa for a while now. This is, unfortunately, reactive.
Thank God we had level-headed Barack Obama as President instead of one of those panty-waisted rethuglidum versions.
Hahaha. I can’t believe the hick-fools who tried to make political hay over something so unrelated as a pirate attack and kidnapping. There’s sick sea air in your wingered heads.
Well done all the way around, America.
…something so unrelated as a pirate attack and kidnapping.
Rare form this morning, my boy. That is some quality lunacy right there.
Oh, Caesar certainly wasn’t the first.
Was it Pompey who was held captive by pirates, all the while promising them they’d rue the day, was ransomed (or escaped), then returned with a fleet and legion to exterminate them?