So in your world the missionaries would have been shot by the Mighty Pirate Killing Task Force Delta? After all, they were a small yacht, loitering with intent outside Somalian designated fishing waters, they must have been pirates.
Oh, wait, they were white weren’t they? You only meant shoot the brown ones I bet.
We need gunboats for this job, not sailboats. Sorry about that.
It’s a Bill Hicks reference. One of his routines from the first gulf war contains that phrase, or something very similar.
This.
Well, in the case of Afghanistan at least, we were the ones who started it, by going in and overthrowing the Taliban. The Taliban were admittedly a bunch of brutal repressive shits, but they weren’t directly responsible for al-Qaeda attacking us.
Same goes for Iraq, whose dictator was a brutal repressive shit, but wasn’t directly responsible for al-Qaeda attacking us.
Same goes for Somalia, whose government is largely in chaos and ineffective, but nonetheless isn’t directly responsible for pirates attacking a US private vessel.
In none of these cases is it quite fair to blame the country in question for having “started something it couldn’t finish”. They all had catastrophically lousy governance, true, but it’s not clear to me that that justifies our jumping in to kick their ass and then abandoning them to the aftermath of war once we get tired of it and decide we “no longer give a flying frack” about them.
Irrespective of the morality issue, there’s the practicality issue. ISTM that that policy of initial outrage -> ass-kicking -> battle fatigue and frustration -> loss of interest hasn’t been working out particularly successfully in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I see no reason to believe it would do any better in Somalia.
Like it or not, this is AFAICT another case where the sensible thing for us to do is to treat criminals as criminals, not as the army of a de facto enemy nation whose entire civil structure and population is considered a potential target for our ass-kicking impulses.
They were responsible for sheltering AQ and providing them with a safe haven…and then refusing to allow us to do anything about that. I agree with you about Iraq having zero to do with AQ, but I don’t think that anyone can reasonably excuse the Taliban on that score, even if they weren’t directly responsible. Since AQ WAS directly responsible, a reasonable action on the Taliban’s part would have been to wash their hands of the whole mess and allow the international community to deal with AQ within their borders. They chose to fight instead.
-XT
More than the rest of Africa actually. I agree completely, and wonder if the only reason the UN hasn’t sent a peaceful sovereignty mission there are worries it’d lead to conflict and instability to one of the few bright spots on that continent.
They already have their own currency and government why risk catching the ol’ Al-Shabab by flushing them with misappropriated and well intentioned but wasted donor funds.
Hey, hey! Stop maligning America!
I happen to have it on good authority that all those little brown people actually want America to blow them up, and are capable of saying so, clearly and distinctly!
True, but AFAICT, technically Somalia’s in exactly the same position with regard to the Somali pirates. The Somali government, such as it is, may not actually want Somali pirates operating out of their ports, but the pirates are effectively sheltering under the notion of Somali sovereignty.
Does anybody have a plausible case for thinking that the Somali government would be any more welcoming of large-scale international attacks on their (nominal) territory and population than the Taliban were?
No, because nobody’s even considering attempting anything like that in their wildest dreams.
Not even Hillary. 
The cynic in me can’t see any way that there’s the political willpower in any government to spend a lot of money addressing this. I’d imagine a nominal response — a task force, a few fishing boats (which may or may not contain pirates) finding their lives hot, bright and explody — but nothing that’ll actually get Somalia in a position to be able to deal with this as its own problem.
I don’t think the two are comparable to be honest. The Taliban actively supported AQ…they even had senior AQ members in their government. Somalia’s government, such as it is, has zero control (at the national level) of the pirates or anything else.
Oh, definitely not. I can’t see the Somali’s welcoming invaders with open arms, and in fact I could see them resisting as hard as they are able to, any foreign force that comes in to restore order. But that doesn’t make the situations comparable. The Taliban actually had at least a quasi-functional government before the invasion, and while they didn’t control the entire country (the Northern Alliance did control territory and were in active rebellion IIRC), it’s nothing like the situation in Somalia today, which is almost pure anarchy and chaos on the national level, with the only control, such as it is, at the local level.
-XT
You know considering they were missionaries, I really wouldn’t…
First, this has nothing to do what color the people are. They could be modern-day Vikings, and I would recommend the same course of action. And the “fucking stupids” sailing through this area are every major shipping company, along with fishing trawlers, garbage scows, aid ships, and every manner of maritime traffic, including yachts sailing around the world. And as CNN reported, the couples could not carry fire-arms since they would have been confiscated at most ports they visited. The same with most crews who are not allowed to arm themselves. And this is not an isolated problem along the Somali coast, but their reach has extended across almost the entire extent of the Indian Ocean. The first map linked to by stpauler shows how that reach has been growing. Sail out of Sri Lanka or Mumbai at your own risk apparently.
As for capabilities. The Somali coast is around 3000 km. Aegis systems radar has a range of 190 km, according to the Federation of American Scientists. So about 20-25 destroyers could provide complete coverage over that area. Per Wikipedia, they are over 90 ships fitted with the Aegis systems among the various navies. Combined that with long range interceptors or their equivalent for interdiction working in conjunction with the transitional Somali government which is building a naval base in Bosaso along the Gulf of Aden, I don’t see what technical difficulties would prevent a long term task force from cracking down on all illegal traffic along the coast - pirates, illegal trawlers, illegal dumpers, etc. Djibouti is also available to serve as the operational headquarters as well as Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain.
And this is using the top of the line destroyers. I am certain lesser capable vessels would be up to the task. Per a cite from lieu posted in the GD thread on the same topic, they are over 30 vessels patrolling the area - which does not work.
We need to switch from trying to patrol the ocean to controlling traffic in and out of the ports. Patrols are not preventing attacks, and attempts to free hostages once they have been taken have been proven futile also. Several crews have suffered fatalities since the beginning of the year.
It is absolutely pathetic that the international community - and its citizens - have allowed this situation to continue for almost two decades now. One reason we have is because most of those 600-700 nationals are brown people. If the majority were European and American crews, I am certain SAS and SF teams would have been sent in long ago. But they are just poor fishermen from South Asia or the Philippines registered out brown countries like Panama.
It looks like we are going to try plan B first
And since the majority of traffic is for European markets, they should be the one to bear the brunt of the work, but a much broader international coalition should be formed, especially under UN control so it could better coordinate with their work in Somalia. Further in the NAVFOR site states their primary missions are to escort World Food Programme ships and support the joint mission between the African Union and the United Nations.
I certainly hope they are able to meet this goal. I think a hard crack down on the piracy and other illegal activities would go along way toward ensuring its success. Currently, they go after the pirates if a ship is not on escort duty and is close enough - and they usually are not.
It also appears we have two task forces there as well. CTF 150 and 151, yet their link goes a the Fifth Fleet page which does not mention them, so I don’t know what their current status is or the size of the contingent.
Reading through those sites gives me a small measure of hope, but the current resources tasked to the region are woefully inadequate.
Perhaps not, but I reckon it’s a lot easier to outrun a copter carrying an engine block shooting and hitting sniper. Maybe Hollywood has them, but not even the US Marines have those magic bullets that can hit every small thing in and out of sight when fired from a fast-and-erratically-moving aircraft or vehicle.
They did a pretty good job of picking off those two in the lifeboat last year.
Reading the EUNAVFOR site:
“EUNAVFOR Somalia – Operation ATALANTA’s main tasks are to escort merchant vessels carrying humanitarian aid of the World Food Program (WFP) and vessels of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). EUNAVFOR also protects vulnerable vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, deters and disrupts piracy. EUNAVFOR finally monitors fishing activity off the coast of Somalia.”
So the current task force is already there to assist the Somali government.
I don’t see it as attacking Somalia, but similar to our drug interdiction missions in Colombia - not the best comparison, considering the long term results of that endeavor, but we did prevent it from becoming a complete narco-state. I think the Somalis would welcome a UN task force that took out the majority of the pirates and re-established sovereignty over their territorial waters. I am not recommending wholesale bombing of every port in the country, but interdicting every boat that is unregistered and arresting the crews of any vessels that don’t have the correct permits or papers or whatever a ship is supposed to have in international water or Somali waters. Require every legitimate vessel to carry a transponder or whatever to automatically identify themselves. Whatever it is we use for aircraft. No signal, you better get ready to be boarded.
I can only imagine how frustrated the sailors must be when they keep receiving distress calls and are nowhere near the ship in trouble.
I wouldn’t advocate anything that would blow up “a few fishing boats which may or may not contain pirates.” I’m thinking more along the lines of the maritime equivalent of the undercover cop wandering through the bad part of town waiting for a mugger to jump him. Put some armor and weaponry under the hood of a few trawlers, luxury yachts, and small shipping vessels, and wait for pirates to make a move. Then blow them out of the water before they have a chance to tell their buddies what the “undercover” boat looks like.
The problem is that we’re dealing with a million square miles of ocean and there really aren’t that many pirates. You could potentially cruise around for a very long time before someone took the bait.
Care to make any more hysterical calls to action? :rolleyes:
How could that possibly work? These pirates are using legitimate fishing vessels. They’d have transponders.
In reply to Agnostic Pagan, the reference to little brown people was a dig at the west, and their attitudes in the first place, everyone else seems to have got this.
Just because something is done by a lot of people, including large companies, doesn’t mean it’s not fucking stupid. Also, if all the shipping lines were to refuse to travel there unarmed laws would change rapidly - someone upthread already cited one example.
Finally, in the specific example we’re talking about, it’s missionaries, not anyone with a worthwhile reason for being there. Especially sailing.