Stupid Foreign Policy?
Posted by Joel Friedlander | 9 Comments
“Lessons From the Barbary Pirate Wars”, By Jeffrey Gettleman in NY Times 4 /12/09 states:
“…[A]ny effort to wipe out Somali pirate dens like Xarardheere or Eyl immediately conjures up the ghost of “Black Hawk Down,” the episode in 1993 when clan militiamen in flip-flops killed 18 American soldiers. Until America can get over that, and until the world can put Somalia together as a nation, another solution suggests itself: just steer clear — way clear, like 500 miles plus — of Somalia’s seas.”
This conclusion to the current piracy situation, and we are all familiar with what is going on, suggests that Americans have become cowards unworthy of World Power. Just to make one point: 100 Americans died at the Battle of Bunker (actually Breeds) Hill.
Where has our sense of proportion gone? What we should have done, if we were a genuine power, after the ‘Black Hawk Down’ episode, would have been to have our air force flatten the entire area of the country where our soldiers were killed. Instead, we pulled out ran like rabbits.
We did the same thing when we lost many more soldiers in Lebanon during the Reagan Administration. We have been paying for those acts for many years, since it emboldened our enemies. Instead of fighting back when we should we have, we have attacked countries when we shouldn’t have, when we had no reason to do it. We have had a genuinely stupid foreign policy and it has been so under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 2. We need to pull our head out of our ass and act like a true World Power. The Barbary Pirates of the early 19th Century only ceased their acts when Algeria was invaded by the French in 1830 and a third of its population killed in the fighting. That was the end of centuries of piracy, until now.
What do you all think we should do?
Tags: cowardess > foreign policy > piracy
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April 12th, 2009 @
Pirates and the CIA: What would Thomas Jefferson have done? by Ken Silverstein in Harpers on April 9.
“For months, a former senior CIA officer has been telling me that pirate activity off Somalia was a problem that needed to be aggressively dealt with. By chance, I had a meeting with him yesterday as the Maersk Alabama hijacking was unfolding. Here’s what he had to say (he updated his remarks today):
April 13th, 2009 @
We should do exactly what the Navy Seals did in this current hostage situation with every hostage situation, refuse to pay ransom and kill or capture every hostage taker. The rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips showed would be pirates exactly what happens when they try to take American ships and hold Americans hostages.
I’ve been incredibly surprised that other countries were so willing to pay ransoms, since this so obviously shows weakness, strengthens the pirates, and encourages them to specifically target your country’s ships.
April 13th, 2009 @
Don’t know if you guys read this or not
http://tinyurl.com/7y4lc3
April 13th, 2009 @
Kidnapping and robbing people who were traveling the world was a problem until the 19th Century, whether they were called bandits, highwaymen, robbers, or pirates. The only reason we can now travel with relative safety is that the nations of the world responded vigorously to end robbery, etc. I am not impressed by the article in the tinyurl. There is no excuse for piracy and if pirates have a grievance let them take it to the World Court. If they take matters into their own hands and kidnap ships and their crews they must be dealt with as harshly as possible. If travel and commerce become perilous again the trade of the World will be imperiled. This cannot be allowed to happen.
The only good pirates are Long John Silver and Johnny Depp, and they are fictional characters. All real pirates must be swept off the seas, or buried under them.
April 13th, 2009 @
After reading his apologia for pirates, I had a suspicion that Johann Hari of the London Independent might also be an apologist for terrorists. It didn’t take me long to find a piece of his titled “Israel must negotiate with Hamas” which goes on to argue that Hamas is a democratically elected government. Ugh.
You realize just how batshit crazy those kind of people are when you read his piece about pirates. They have legitimate grievances? Give me a break. Pirates are nothing more than terrorists on the water.
I suppose if you think terrorism is a legitimate expression of frustration with international governance (like Mr. Hari) does, piracy should also seem acceptable.
April 15th, 2009 @
Hari is a morally equivalency buff, but he’s not wrong that we let that country fall into disrepair.
Better to drain the swamp than try to kill all the mosquitoes.
April 16th, 2009 @
Enough of this serious talk, now for something completely different!
Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Rum
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun’s pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey’s throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o’day in a boozing ken.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
. Fifteen men of the whole ship’s list
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
And there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped down in up-staring eyes
In murk sunset and foul sunrise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Fifteen men of ‘em stiff and stark
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers’ glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrariwise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Fifteen men of ‘em good and true
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ev’ry man jack could ha’ sailed with Old Pew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there that took the plum
With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
While we shared all by the rule of thumb,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
More was seen through a sternlight screen…
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
‘Twas a flimsy shift on a bunker cot
With a dirk slit sheer through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot
Oh was she wench or some shudderin’ maid
That dared the knife and took the blade
By God! she had stuff for a plucky jade
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
We wrapped ‘em all in a mains’l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser’s bight
And we heaved ‘em over and out of sight,
With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
April 18th, 2009 @
“What we should have done, if we were a genuine power, after the ‘Black Hawk Down’ episode, would have been to have our air force flatten the entire area of the country where our soldiers were killed.”
I don’t know much about the history of piracy, and frankly haven’t followed much of the recent story in Somalia. I do know that a close friend recently spent time in the Red Sea and mentioned bodies upon bodies floating in the water. These weren’t victims of the pirates, but rather Somalis who drowned while trying to escape to Yemen for a better life.
I can appreciate the mentality of protecting your own. Still your suggestion of addressing an international incident with a grotesque display of force is too reminscent of “Shock and Awe” and Goldwater’s call to “Bomb ‘em back to the stone age” to be swallowed. You are right to call on America’s unique responsibilites as a super power… they dictate that we should act not from hubris, but from what will best serve the people of the region we’re claiming to protect.
I get it… hearing about Navy snipers jacks people up. Still, do you really think a full scale military action in this region is going to best protect the Somali people and American interests?
April 19th, 2009 @
If we fail to respond vigorously to the pirates we will invite the emergence of another “Dark Ages,” where commerce cannot be carried on safely. That would be too horrid to contemplate. How many times need we ransom King Richard the Lionhearted?
What I said was that we flatten the places where the pirates congregate. It would be the same as destroying an enemy military base. If those places remain safe it would mean that we could never conquer the problem. There is no central government in Somalia to remove the pirate bases, so the international community must do it. I was not suggesting that we land troops on their territory, only that we flatten their base camps, all of which are on the coastline. If this is not done there is no prospect of eliminating the continual seizure of international shipping and the kidnapping of their crews for ransom. If it all sounds like shock and awe, the problem is that the previous president used our power in the wrong places and the wrong times, often for no reason at all. That however, does not vitiate the validity of the tactic.