The Redhunter

« Piracy - The Simple Yet Impossible Solution | Main | American Dominance of the Seas Under Threat »

April 10, 2009

Piracy - The Simple Yet Impossible Solution Part II

This was going to be an update to the post I wrote yesterday, but it just got too big. Following are some informed thoughts I found today on the issue.

First up I think it's important to know how the pirates are getting away with all this. From David Freddoso, writing at NRO's The Corner:

Vice Admiral William Gortney described:

"If the coalition is out there with ships, airplanes and helicopters, there aren't any pirates. If they see us, they're 'fishermen.' If they don't see us, they are potentially pirates...

The pirates' skiffs are exactly the same as the fishing boats in the area. And even when apparent pirates are identified -- out "fishing" without fishing gear -- the U.S. military releases them unless they are caught in the act.

When we get on top, either with maritime patrol or with helicopters, or with a ship, and we look inside these skiffs, and we determine that they don't have nets or baskets, and they have AK-47s, RPGs and ladders, we know that they're not involved in fishing. And that's when we take them, we disarm them, we take their pictures, we fingerprint them, biometric them, and then we release them if we did not catch them in the act.

Gortney described their modus operandi:

If we're not around, they will attempt to attack a type of vessel that is susceptible to attack, which is based on the speed of a vessel and the freeboard - the height of the first deck from the water...We see the attacks in the morning and with a sea-state of less than three feet. If it's less than three feet, in the morning, then we watch for these 'fishermen' to become pirates.

"Low and slow" invites the attack -- a low freeboard doing 13 knots or less. The pirates use grappling hooks and rope ladders to board them. But ships with high freeboards doing over 15 knots tend to get away. More:

"[The pirates] will get in their skiffs and pull up alongside and intimidate either with AK-47s or rocket-propelled grenades, in some cases shooting both to get the captain to stop...The time from the initial attack to on-board the vessel is about a 15-minute window of opportunity. If we're not there to prevent them from getting aboard in that 15-minute window of opportunity, and they're successfully on board and they stay on board, then we're in a hostage situation, and the pirates take it to the East Coast of Somalia and work the negotiation process with the shipping company that's responsible for that vessel."

The pirates belong to well-coordinated and hierarchical clans, not unlike commercial militaries, and clan leaders call the shots during negotiations. Our government does not involve itself in this "arbitration," witnesses testified. The average hostage situation lasts for 45 days, and the average ransom is anywhere from $1.5 to $2 million. It makes sense that most shipping companies would pay ransoms for their crew and cargo, yet at the same time this heightens the incentive for more pirate activity.

This, then, is why nothing serious is being done; there's not enough pain. Of course, it also means that you, me, and all other consumers are paying for it through higher prices or lower corporate profits, which affects our investments, as all these companies do is pass it on. When they're feeling financial pain they'll complain to the politicians, but until then my guess is not much will be done.

And if right now you're complaining about how our Navy releases these guys unless they're caught in the act... after all the grief the U.S. took over Guantanamo Bay it's a suicidal politician indeed who'd do anything less than give them full Miranda rights and offer a full battery of ACLU attorneys to anyone we arrested. Anything less and the "human rights" crowd would scream bloody murder.

Yesterday we discussed putting armed private contractors on ships. Here's another idea, from the New York Daily News (via Ann Althouse):

U.S. military commanders have already prepared battle plans for ending the scourge of piracy on the high seas off Somalia if President Obama pulls the trigger, sources told the Daily News Wednesday....

Retired U.S. Ambassador Robert Oakley, who was special envoy to Somalia in the 1990s, said U.S. special operations forces have drawn up detailed plans to attack piracy groups where they live on land, but are awaiting orders from the Obama national security team.

"Our special operations people have been itching to clean them up. So far, no one has let them," Oakley told the Daily News.

This would avoid the problems associated with putting private contractors on board ships for defense as was suggested in yesterday's post. Even so, any "collateral damage" will be played by anti-American elements for all it's worth. On the plus side, last December we did get a UN Security Council Resolution that authorizes such actions. Not that I think we need it.

I'm all for land operations by special ops, but let's remember that these guys aren't invulnerable. I've read more than a bit of the history of these types of raids, and the truth is that they're extraordinarily risky, and I remember reading somewhere that they have about a 50-50 chance of success. This isn't a Chuck Norris movie, and a lot of special ops guys get killed in failed raids, or they survive but have to abort the mission without accomplishing the objective. When things go wrong, it's usually because of inaccurate intelligence, which, try as you might, is hard to get right.

All of which brings us to the concept of "international law" and "rule of law," terms that get thrown around a lot. The invaluable former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, writing at National Review, explains what they really mean as applied to the problem at hand:

But as the hearts-and-minds game goes on, the "international community" on the receiving end stands unimpressed as ever. Turns out it's a jungle out there. What impresses, as all America's enemies from the Barbary pirates through Osama bin Laden have always known, is the strong horse against the weak horse. What makes possible global trade, which turns into American wealth, which turns into unparalleled American largesse, is American might -- American might and an American commitment to use that might as necessary to ensure a civilized global order.

"Civilized" is a much-misunderstood word, thanks to the "rule of law" crowd that is making our planet an increasingly dangerous place. Civilization is not an evolution of mankind but the imposition of human good on human evil. It is not a historical inevitability. It is a battle that has to be fought every day, because evil doesn't recede willingly before the wheels of progress.

There is nothing less civilized than rewarding evil and thus guaranteeing more of it. High-minded as it is commonly made to sound, it is not civilized to appease evil, to treat it with "dignity and respect," to rationalize its root causes, to equivocate about whether evil really is evil, and, when all else fails, to ignore it -- to purge the very mention of its name -- in the vain hope that it will just go away. Evil doesn't do nuance. It finds you, it tests you, and you either fight it or you're part of the problem.

The men who founded our country and crafted our Constitution understood this. They understood that the "rule of law" was not a faux-civilized counterweight to the exhibition of might. Might, instead, is the firm underpinning of law and of our civilization. The Constitution explicitly recognized that the United States would have enemies; it provided Congress with the power to raise military forces that would fight them; it made the chief executive the commander-in-chief, concentrating in the presidency all the power the nation could muster to preserve itself by repelling evil. It did not regard evil as having a point of view, much less a right to counsel.

That's not our position anymore. The scourge of piracy was virtually wiped out in 19th century because its practitioners were regarded as barbarians -- enemies of the human race (hostis humani generis, as Bret Stephens recently reminded us in a brilliant Wall Street Journal essay). They derived no comfort from the rule of law, for it was not a mark of civilization to give them comfort. The same is true of unlawful enemy combatants, terrorists who scoffed at the customs of civilized warfare. To regard them as mere criminals, to assume the duty of trying to understand why they would brutalize innocents, to arm them with rights against civilized society, was not civilized.

I've heard some conservatives absurdly insist that the pirates are not criminals but are terrorists. Please. They are neither criminals not terrorists as properly defined. They are pirates; barbarians if you will.

They used to hang such barbarians from the yardarms of ships when they caught them, without all the niceties of a trial complete with Ramsey Clark as chief defense council.

I'm not advocating that we go to such lengths. Whether we arm the merchants with private contractors, send our special ops guys ashore to clean them out, or just conduct "aggressive offensive operations against pirates at sea" is fine with me. But patrolling with scarce multi-million dollar destroyers is ridiculous. Most of all, we do need leaders with the political courage to do what has to be done and who can take the heat and not back down when the so-called human rights crowd goes nuts.