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Should the U.S. Navy shell Somali villages that harbor pirates?

Should the U.S. Navy shell Somali villages that harbor pirates?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 20 43.5%

  • No.

    Votes: 26 56.5%
  • Total voters
    46
donsutherland1 said:
Onion Eater,

I believe some form of military action might be helpful, but such action would need to comply with the Laws of War e.g., compliance would rule out indiscriminate bombardment. Attacks that target pirates, pirate facilities/boats and/or weapons would be legitimate.

Several possible steps might include:

1. Scheduling the passage of shipping so as to allow for naval escorts.
2. Capturing strategic points on the Somali coastline e.g., major ports used by the pirates. Merely raiding or clearing the villages probably won't provide a sustainable solution.
3. Creating a temporary secured zone comprised of those captured areas, with the African Union taking charge of security arrangements.
4. If or when--probably if, in the near-term--Somalia has a government capable of exercising jurisdiction in the captured areas, those areas could revert to Somalia. That understanding should be explicit, as Somalia is presently a failed state, but it should not be assumed that Somalia will remain a failed state over the longer-term. There needs to be flexibility to allow Somalia to regain control over its territory once it overcomes its failed state status.
5. Some form of international assistance for the Somali coastal communities so that the economic environment would become less attractive to piracy.

A UN Security Council resolution would be quite helpful in pursuing some of the above steps e.g., setting up a temporary protected zone. An understanding that is reached with the nominal Somali government and any leading Somali tribal elders could also be beneficial.

There is a possibility that agreements forged with Somali tribal elders might reduce the need for military action by reducing piracy. If that avenue is productive, then military operations might not be necessary or they could be more limited than described above.
Click to expand...

In addition to this fact, I recommend sinking Somali pirate boats on sight.

If nothing else, it will make piracy more expensive, more risky, and less profitable.
 
From an op-ed written by Peter Zimmerman, professor emeritus at King's College London:

Thirty thousand ships a year, roughly 100 a day, 50 in each direction, transit the waters off the coast of Somalia. One convoy in each direction, each day, alternating between fast ships and slower ones, and each accompanied by four or five escort vessels, would do the job. There would then be only two targets a day in each area of coast for the pirates to find, instead of 100. When marauders approach a convoy, they could be warned off by the escorts or destroyed if they attack.

Convoys have historically been the antidote to piracy on the open seas, and they can defend against these attacks once again. Modern naval escorts, equipped with helicopters, have the ability to establish a perimeter around the merchant ships, the firepower to stop a pirate, the legal jurisdiction to do so under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the ability to deliver their prisoners for trial.
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Peter Zimmerman Says Convoys Are an Answer to Piracy - WSJ.com
 
thabigred said:
Captain lets say you lived somewhere on the west coast in a really small poorish community.

Some guys have been just recently going out to sea and conducting piracy on vessels entering the panama canal.

Would you be ok with China carpet bombing your entire area, just because you are suspected to harboring the pirates?
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I understand your question and the concern is valid. It is not in my heart to just lay waste to innocents.

Desperate times require desperate measures. On both sides. I understand that too.

But there comes a point in time when you either become a part of the problem or part of the solution. If an individual prefers to stay neutral and lend their harmless sympathy one way or the other, fine. But get out of the line of fire.

But if, let's say, some people moved in next door to me that would inevitably bring harm to me or my family, and I had no authority to turn to, to remedy the situation, I would take it upon myself to either eradicate them myself, or remove my family out of harm's way if the risk of removing the threat outweighed the risk of harming my family.

I would NOT turn a blind eye. I would NOT sell them mango's or serve them lunch. I would NOT support them in any way.

But, you never know what you'd do until you are standing in that man's sandals. It's easy for me to type what Ï would do." Doing it is another talk show altogether.

So. What am I left with? A heavy heart for the innocents that can't escape their own reality and an instinctive drive for self-preservation. If I must decide, the latter wins.

Walk softly. Carry a big-ass stick. Play Whack-a-Somali. Happy hunting. Ooooh-rah. :mrgreen:
 
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Captain America said:
So. What am I left with? A heavy heart for the innocents that can't escape their own reality and an instinctive drive for self-preservation. If I must decide, the latter wins.

Walk softly. Carry a big-ass stick. Play Whack-a-Somali. Happy hunting. Ooooh-rah. :mrgreen:
Click to expand...
Self preservation? Are the Somalis causing you harm?
 
Captain America said:
But there comes a point in time when you either become a part of the problem or part of the solution. If an individual prefers to stay neutral and lend their harmless sympathy one way or the other, fine. But get out of the line of fire.
Click to expand...
Exactly. If the Somalis would unite today, round up all the pirates, and throw them in the nearest hellhole prison for the next two centuries, I would say we should waste no time in extending a hand of thanks to the Somalis.

If there are Somalis that have legitimate business to transact with other nations, we should do legitimate business with honest and legitimate businessmen.

However, when Somalis seek to excuse the piracy, and endeavor to assist their avoidance of punishment, such as the clan elders who attempted to negotiate with FBI hostage negotiators a deal to let the pirates escape all justice, they are most definitely part of the problem:

Negotiations over the American captain taken hostage by Somali pirates broke down on Saturday, according to Somali officials, after American officials insisted that the pirates be arrested and a group of elders representing the pirates refused.
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On Saturday, a group of Somali elders from Gara’ad, mediating on behalf of the pirates, spoke by satellite phone to American officials, according to Abdul Aziz Aw Mahamoud, a district commissioner in the semiautonomous region of Puntland in northeastern Somalia. The elders proposed a deal in which the pirates would release Captain Phillips, with no ransom paid, and that the pirates would then be allowed to escape.
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So long as Somalis pretend piracy is "no big deal" and fail to oppose it categorically, they will earn damnation equal to that of the pirates, and deservedly so.
 
Onion Eater said:
Three cheers for the Navy SEALS who whacked these criminals! Kidnapped US captain freed; snipers kill 3 pirates

Unfortunately, these thieves have become a serious economic problem. Shippers face higher insurance as pirates run amok

Fortunately, it is a problem with a simple and cost-free solution. Just kill them.

This isn't like Pirates of the Caribbean, where they have a top-secret hideout in some hidden cove that nobody can find. They are operating from villages in plain view of the dozens of navel vessels we have sent to the area.

Jeez! Give me command of just one destroyer for a single day and I will put an abrupt end to the entire piracy problem. There are too many Somalis anyway. Nobody will miss the ones who live along the coast. The inland Somalis can make an honest living at farming - I'll even offer to pay top dollar for any agricultural products they have to sell. But the ones on the coast have to die.

In my experience, people are motivated by only two things: fear and greed. The Somalis have tasted greed. Now let us teach them fear.
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In theory, sure, but in practice I think our military is stretched enough.
 
Unfortunately, it's really not going to do any good, the villagers depend on the pirates for their survival, but they don't facilitate the piracy. You have to remember in Somalia, the average person makes $1000 a year, but a pirate can make $10,000 per raid. The pirates are the super-rich among the Somali people, they're the people everyone wants to be.

The only way to stop it is to get an actual government in Somalia, which hasn't had one since 1991, and to put every single pirate caught on the high seas to death, no exceptions.

When they realize they're not only not going to get any ransom, but they're going to be killed and dumped into the surf, they'll stop... one way or the other.
 
What ethical policy is behind this?

"To bomb/shell any group that harbors violent criminals?"

We'd have to bomb every country/group on the planet, and send a missile into the space station for good measure...don't think we don't know your'e up there space-station-people! I'm sure Richard Garriot has been a facist in ultima online once or twice.

Retalitory violence only works against certain cultures and people, under certain circumstances. Very often it has no real impact, or actually worsens the situation. If you propose that these dirt poor somali villages would "clean up their act" as a result of it, you're kidding yourself.

-Mach
 
Captain America said:
I understand your question and the concern is valid. It is not in my heart to just lay waste to innocents.

Desperate times require desperate measures. On both sides. I understand that too.

But there comes a point in time when you either become a part of the problem or part of the solution. If an individual prefers to stay neutral and lend their harmless sympathy one way or the other, fine. But get out of the line of fire.

But if, let's say, some people moved in next door to me that would inevitably bring harm to me or my family, and I had no authority to turn to, to remedy the situation, I would take it upon myself to either eradicate them myself, or remove my family out of harm's way if the risk of removing the threat outweighed the risk of harming my family.

I would NOT turn a blind eye. I would NOT sell them mango's or serve them lunch. I would NOT support them in any way.

But, you never know what you'd do until you are standing in that man's sandals. It's easy for me to type what Ï would do." Doing it is another talk show altogether.

So. What am I left with? A heavy heart for the innocents that can't escape their own reality and an instinctive drive for self-preservation. If I must decide, the latter wins.

Walk softly. Carry a big-ass stick. Play Whack-a-Somali. Happy hunting. Ooooh-rah. :mrgreen:
Click to expand...

You are acting as if it is this or nothing, the us military have plenty of options on the table left in taking care of this. Bombing civilians is not a way to solve this, you would only piss off more in the Islamic world.

In by doing so, America stops being someone who solves the problem in that area, but a large reason why they continue to do what they do.

Bombing civilians is not an option on the table, at all, keep living that dream buddy. America and the western world has grown up from being childish like this, and lashing out at at an entire country, when really it is a select few of individuals.
 
Add them to the list of "Axis of Evil"!!!!
 
thabigred said:
Bombing civilians is not an option on the table, at all, keep living that dream buddy. America and the western world has grown up from being childish like this, and lashing out at at an entire country, when really it is a select few of individuals.
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Don't recall anyone suggesting bombing all of Somalia. Just those villages that harbor pirates....ya know, those "select few of individuals" and their in-port co-conspirators and accomplices?
 
thabigred said:
somali+pirates.jpg


Laws are enforced on a case by case bases, you just don't go nuking and bombing shanti towns because there are a section of crimanls in them.
Click to expand...

I do agree with some sayings here about being the issue a benefit to the villagers .. citizens of 3d world countries can be easily brainwashed due their ignorance, so I think that some "big head" convenced them that what the pirates are doing is 100% legal and will gain them a huge benefit, or they agreed with piracy as a last solution to end their poverty and famine .
In both ways I think shelling the villages that harbor pirates isn't a good idea because its impossible to find all the villages are pirates, and it will make more pirates than it will eliminate.
 
Those who would honestly shell towns in Somalia have a lesser value for human life then the people they seek to murder, and would only make the situation worse. The United States is not the German 3rd Reich, we do not need to exterminate people and resort to brainless violence and slaughter. You people sound like a bunch of 13 year old militarized kids hopped up on energy drinks who play too much Halo and CoD.
 
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celticlord said:
So long as Somalis pretend piracy is "no big deal" and fail to oppose it categorically, they will earn damnation equal to that of the pirates, and deservedly so.
Click to expand...

Inside Somalia. Piracy is NOT a big deal.

Starvation is.
Famine is.
Lack of crops is.
Rape is and so is murder.

Piracy is nothing compared to that
 
Ahmed Shaheen said:
I do agree with some sayings here about being the issue a benefit to the villagers .. citizens of 3d world countries can be easily brainwashed due their ignorance, so I think that some "big head" convenced them that what the pirates are doing is 100% legal and will gain them a huge benefit, or they agreed with piracy as a last solution to end their poverty and famine .
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Or the fact Egyptians along with other countries have been enterting our waters and stealing out fishes.
The correct response for me is to steal Egyptian and European ships in retaliation no?

Just yesterday a Egyptian boat was found fishing illegally in Somali waters. What do you think the correct punishment is?
 
Laila said:
Inside Somalia. Piracy is NOT a big deal.
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Thus we agree on the problem.

The solution will come when that changes. Somalis need to consider piracy a big deal, and they need to stop those of them that do it. The sooner the Somalis do that, the less likely it will be that boatloads of Somalis get killed.

It's not a complex equation.
 
Laila said:
Or the fact Egyptians along with other countries have been enterting our waters and stealing out fishes.
The correct response for me is to steal Egyptian and European ships in retaliation no?
Click to expand...
No.

Laila said:
Just yesterday a Egyptian boat was found fishing illegally in Somali waters. What do you think the correct punishment is?
Click to expand...
Assuming the allegation is true, arrest the crew, confiscate the fish.
 
thabigred said:
Maybe we should just go into the really bad neighborhoods of the US and unload a few thousand machine gun rounds every where.

Same logic i'm getting from this thread.

My mind is blown by the ignorance.
Click to expand...

Why just the US? If your house is infested with bugs, you don't just have the exterminator in for one room....
 
celticlord said:
No.

Assuming the allegation is true, arrest the crew, confiscate the fish.
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And that is where we differ.

If US/Egypt/West cannot control it's companies ships entering other countries waters illegally. Somalis have every right to take it from them at will for breaking our laws.

Or hang?
I have little sympathy or patience with this. Confiscation does nothing and deters no one.
 
celticlord said:
Thus we agree on the problem.

The solution will come when that changes. Somalis need to consider piracy a big deal, and they need to stop those of them that do it. The sooner the Somalis do that, the less likely it will be that boatloads of Somalis get killed.

It's not a complex equation.
Click to expand...

Why should we?

We have more important things to worry about. A few ships from billionaires being taken means very little and registers with no one in a country where people starve everyday.

Perhaps our priorities differ ... :roll:
 
Perhaps strategic placement of radar/movement activated GPS systems to early identify the scurge pirates once they are more than a few miles offshore, coupled with onboard armed security, remote controlled drones capable of fire power, convoy style/wagon train shipping methods, might help.

Obviously, the area is too vast to spot each and every little piss-ant boat these sea terrorists can launch. But it might be possible to track and identify their movements from space once the boat moves further offshore. Once sighted, marked, and identified an armed drone could be dispached to do recon. If it is determined to be an enemy threat, it can be eliminated before it reaches the ship. It takes quite a while to get 200-300 miles offshore in a small craft. The pirate "mother crafts" that harbor these attack boats should be easy enough to identify. Perhaps mandate that all boats in the area, more than 50 miles offshore emit an internatinal friend or foe frequency. Those pirate boats not emitting this frequency are legal targets for demise.

If the pirates get past this outer perimeter of defence, onboard radar can spot them a few miles out, giving the convoy's armed helicopters time to get in the air and engage. If, in a worst case scenerio, the pirates actually get within firing distance of the ship, the onboard security from the collective convoy can set-up for a real nice turkey-shoot.

No quarter for Pirates. No mercy. It needs to be understood that engaging in this practice means certain death.

Many steps and measures to deter piracy, such as the ones above, have yet to be implimented. We should try them before we start blowing fishing villages away I suppose.

But we should take no option off the table.

Zero tolerance for piracy henceforth.
 
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UtahBill said:
Why just the US? If your house is infested with bugs, you don't just have the exterminator in for one room....
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You know the easiest way to stop an infestation of rats, you eliminate the allowed the rats to exist there in the first place. By killing the rats and not working on cleaning up the mess around the house, it only allows more rats to come feed.

Not saying you don't kill some rats, but is the exterminator going to go around your house destroying your stuff to get to those rats.
celticlord said:
Don't recall anyone suggesting bombing all of Somalia. Just those villages that harbor pirates....ya know, those "select few of individuals" and their in-port co-conspirators and accomplices?
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You think in the military had enough info on the pirates to find out what villages they were in, they could just send in a few teams to nab the ****ers, the fact is they don't know.

So this idea that we just bomb the coast line of Somali tell the pirates give up is hogwash.
 
Ahmed Shaheen said:
I do agree with some sayings here about being the issue a benefit to the villagers .. citizens of 3d world countries can be easily brainwashed due their ignorance, so I think that some "big head" convenced them that what the pirates are doing is 100% legal and will gain them a huge benefit, or they agreed with piracy as a last solution to end their poverty and famine .
In both ways I think shelling the villages that harbor pirates isn't a good idea because its impossible to find all the villages are pirates, and it will make more pirates than it will eliminate.
Click to expand...

That is the same lame argument that you used when we discussed terrorists.

It's incorrect.

These people are pirates --- who work for a profit ... not terrorists who have been brainwashed into murdering for Allah.

There is no ideology here --- only greed.

Destroying safe harbors for terrorists will make it harder for them to operate.

In accordance with this idea, I favor arming the crews of those freighters. Give those crews guns and authorization to kill any pirate ****bag that sets foot on their ship.

Make life painful for the somali pirate ****bags.
 
The comments in this thread perfectly illustrates why terrorism exists. Americans with cushy lifestyles are calling for the wanton murder of civilians whose only crime is to live next to some pirates. The pirates so far have not killed a single American, much less anyone personally known to them. Still, the dehumanizing of innocents and desire for blood is strong.

You wonder why Palestinians call for the deaths of Israeli civilians? They live in poverty and watch their family members die. The misplaced hatred is magnified quite a bit when they actually have something to complain about. It is all too easy to give into anger and simply lash out with violence.

The thing that makes the U.S. different from various terrorists is that we make military choices based on logic and reason, not revenge fantasies. Pirates have been killed, but only because it was necessary, not out of hatred.
 
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