http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090415/pl_politico/21245;_ylt=AlxxgrGQ3ScegnEpBq5Y.RUDW7oF
Any thoughts on this? How would this work in the modern world? Would everyone in South Florida with a 30 foot boat take their hunting rifles out on the open ocean looking for pirates? It seems a little silly to me.
Sounds like a pretty sweet way to get a bunch of Somali fishermen shot up. Really, I don’t see what the advantage would be anyways, we have the 1st and 5th (Coast Guard) largest Navies in the world, I have trouble believing a bunch of mercenaries would do much that the traditional navies aren’t able to do, other then maybe make a confused violent mess of things.
You know who I’m glad isn’t President: Ron Paul.
What happens when the “would-be Rambos” get themselves captured by pirates? Are we (that is, taxpayers) stuck ransoming them?
I could also see dumbos pursuing pirates into Somalian territorial waters and getting fire on by warlords, shooting fishermen by accident, getting run over by merchant ships and sunk…all kinds of messes.
If Ron Paul wants to personally go out and hunt the evil Pirate Vermin on the S.S. Crazy Libertarian, no strings attached, at his own risk, I say Godspeed.
To be fair, I think he’s picturing more private mercenary firms (think Blackwater) then Weekend Warrior types, if for no other reason then I doubt most would be Rambos have the ability to get themselves to Somalia, equip a boat, etc.
I doubt most private firms are set up to operate on the water, though, and unless the bounties were pretty huge, I doubt it would be profitable for them to start doing so.
Letters of Marque worked because it allowed crews to legally plunder the shipping of the enemy. What profit will be made attacking Somali pirates? Of course we have various treaties that prevent us from issuing letters of marque these days.
Odesio
I expect it would result in a lot of random people getting killed, just like our offering bounties for terrorists got innocent people locked up and tortured.
If I have learned anything from that movie preview guy with the deep voice, it is… “In order to defeat the pirates… he had to BECOME a pirate!”
I’m writing Eleanor Holmes Norton tonight and demanding that Congress issue a letter of marque to Nicholas Cage.
That would be the late Don LaFontaine.
And Odesio kills the thread. A Letter of Marque isn’t a license to attack pirates, it’s a license for third party privateers to attack ships flagged by the enemy. It’s not a license to fight pirates, it’s a license to become a pirate. There’s no profit in plundering Somali pirate ships since they aren’t exactly carrying loads of gold doubloons. And the end of it is that the United States has signed treaties promising to abide by the principles of the Treaty of Paris in which signing states agreed to relinquish the right to issue Letters of Marque. And so the conversation is over.
Or as Adam Carolla used to put it: “Tonight on Hack: In order to catch a pirate…Hack has to become…A RAPIST”.
Now, if they paid a bounty to attack pirates, I’d consider it. Of course, they’d have to allow more powerful weaponry than usual, and I’d want toinstall some better electronics to make sure nobody snmeaks up on me. Still, I’d be willing to get a ship, armor it up, stack on some mounted guns…
and then sell it to some idiot who thinks he’s going to get rich off the bounties! 
That is EXACTLY what I was thinking of!
I’m starting to think Ron Paul was born 200 years ago and invented a time machine that brought him to modern times. Maybe in his next campaign he can run on a platform of safeguarding our 3rd Amendment rights.
I think we need to DISCOURAGE paramilitary organizations, not ENCOURAGE them. Enough of Blackwater and their ilk. We don’t need our own Hessians.
All this discussion over piracy, and dressing like Jack Sparrow, and q ships combined with an overnight showing of Pirates of the Carribean to influence my dreams …
I had the wackiest dream that a bunch of people bought or made an old pirate ship, complete with cannons … and crewed it and put all sorts of advertising in the high end magazines about a romantic cruise but when anybody not in on the gag asked it was sold out. Then they sailed to the Indian Ocean and waited for a pirate to attack. They blew them out of the water with the cannons. I think the rational behind the old blackpowder cannons was that in many countries they are not regulated because they are not considered weapons of war [sort of like in the US black powder guns are not licensed in the same way that regular modern weapons are]
I got to thinking, with one of the right design, you would have cannon cover almost 300 degrees around [about dead ahead is the only direction without cannons pointing, it assumes you would have 2 or 3 chase/stern guns]
Though isnt there some polite fiction about US ships of the navy reserve fleet for privately owned american vessels? Not the mothball fleets, been years since I heard some reference to it though.
Step 1. Read article. Step 2. Comment on contents thereof.
Paul is proposing a bounty system to pay the participants, not that they’d be paid by looting the pirates.
Which treaty? The US (so far as I know) never signed the Paris Deceleration.
No, but only because it didn’t feel that it was going fast enough. Hence, the Helsinki Accelerations were perfectly acceptable.
Does Ron Paul use the words “thee” and “thou” in normal conversation and wear a powdered wig?
Coming on the heels of Blackwater - just what America does not need - another private army that cost way more than the regular one.
Their last attack of an American vessel was an attempt to kill the crew and destroy the ship. You can ride on the ship of good intentions and throw flowers at them. I’ll take the one with Blackwater on it.
And when they kill off some third party or otherwise act like the thugs-for-hire that they are, will you just shrug your shoulders ? And that’s assuming they don’t engage in some piracy themselves, for that matter. How about when their behavior gets them blown out of the water by a non-American navy ? The ocean isn’t American occupied territory; unlike in Iraq there are people who can and will hold them accountable.