CQPolitics
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Pirates. What’s next — locusts? Raining frogs?
So far, no U.S.-flagged vessels have been attacked, which may say more about the state of American shipping than anything else.
But what if they were? U.S. military forces are already stretched to the breaking point from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention defense commitments in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
What about our superbly trained SEALs, which look so great in the TV commercials?
You’d think that the free-ranging Somali pirates, who seem sprung from an X-Box, could be somewhat easily dispatched.
But we’ve been down this road before.
The Barbary pirates, so named for the Berber tribes of the North African coast, terrorized Europe for 500 years, from the time of the Crusades through the early 19th century.
In 1784, they began seizing our ships. (Asked why, Tripoli’s ambassador to London claimed the Koran gave Muslims the “right and duty” to plunder the ships of infidels.)
In the present case, the Islamic parties in haphazard control of Mogadishu seemed thoroughly annoyed by the rogue pirates. But I digress.
At first Congress authorized bribes for the Barbary pirates. Eventually, however, the newly minted U.S. Navy and Marines were dispatched to the shores of Tripoli and, after some early, darkly comic disasters, extinguished the threat.
It’s tempting to think we should do the same today in Somalia, less a country than a collection of criminal gangs. But can anyone say “Blackhawk Down”?
According to my soundings, even commando operations to defeat the pirates at sea or in their coastal lairs, much less invading Somalia, seem out of the question, at least for now.
Source: CQPolitics, Nov 30, 2008