• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

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

Onion Eater

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 28, 2008
Messages
753
Reaction score
139
Location
Scottsdale, AZ
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Libertarian
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.
 
I wouldn't object to this, but it's worth remembering that shelling them for one day will not solve any problems. Piracy is more or less going to resume as soon as they build new communities along the coastlines and obtain more boats.

They're going to continue engaging in piracy until there is a strong state in Somalia to prevent them.
 
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque]Letter of marque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
 
They're going to continue engaging in piracy until there is a strong state in Somalia to prevent them.
No state for them.

Somalia needs to be divided up among the neighboring countries, who at the very least have managed to build viable governments that last.

Give the territory to someone who does the job, even if they are less than perfect in it.
 
Take some action? Absolutely. Drastic action? Yes, if necessary. But as posed, the poll question implies rather indiscriminate shelling, which could very well be counterproductive.

We need more info and intel about these villages. We need to identify any citizens-if any-that are against their village harboring these pirates and enlist their aid and provide them with assistance in ridding their village of the pirates.

It may well be that there aren't any such, but if so, we need to know that, too.

Some of the US military assistance programs in Djibouti and other countries around the horn have enjoyed reasonable success, though we don't hear much about them. At a minimum, I would hope that we could assess whether or not such programs (or some other kind of less violent program) would work in some of these Somali villages, before we bring out the big guns and just level them.
 
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.
 
NO, but Somali "mother ships" at sea are to be boarded, searched, and better be clearly a fishing or merchant vessel. If carrying other than a few small arms, the captain gets hung, and his crew gets sent to prison at Diego Garcia....

Don't punish the villagers for what is happening at sea...
 
Just my two cents.

You may not agree with me but at least appreciate my honesty in this matter.

Pirates revenge? Revenge my ass!

F*** those little pigmy mother*******.

I am sick and tired of our country being anchored down from progress because of some 3rd world, ignorant, nasty, archaic culture bent on stupidity.

I realize those folks are in dire straits over there but it ain't my problem. It's THEIR problem. Their culture, by design it seems, prevents them from being much more than they already are. They make their own bed so let them sleep on their piss-stenched mattresses. But, DON'T TREAD ON ME!" If they insist on making their problem our problem, let's give some REAL problems to deal with.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. You can give them all the rice stuffed care packages and financial aid you got and they will STILL be a low-life form of parasitic sub-humanity bent on all the low-character traits known to mankind.

I would give the tribal elders in Somilia 30 days to deal with their own trash and eliminate those engaging in the piracy industry or get the f*** out of the way while we carpet bomb every square inch of that sh**-hole of a country they call Somalia.

Yessir. F*** those retards! I have no human sympathy for those cockroach people.






And to think, I'm having a rather good day. :2wave:

Catch me on a bad day and I might even be a littler harsher in my opinion. :rofl
 
Last edited:
Just my two cents.

You may not agree with me but at least appreciate my honesty in this matter.



I am sick and tired of our country being anchored down from progress because of some 3rd world, ignorant, nasty, archaic culture bent on stupidity.

:

Catch me on a bad day and I might even be a littler harsher in my opinion. :rofl

I feel the same about our GOP leadership....:2razz:
 
Don't punish the villagers for what is happening at sea...
Bloody hell, punish the villagers first. The villagers are the ones getting the benefit of the pirates' ill gotten gains but don't even have the balls to be doing the looting themselves.

If you give safe haven for pirate scum you should die like pirate scum--grotesquely and horribly.
 
I feel the same about our GOP leadership....:2razz:

I wasn't aware the GOP had any leadership. Care to enlighten me? :confused:

It's one thing to want your country to all wear crew cut hair cuts and black horn-rimmed glasses, long skirts, kneel before Jeeezuz, and keep he country stuck in the 50's, living the way you think everyone else should live. We have a way of dealing with those kind of folks in our midst. We vote them out. The are not that significant anymore.

It's quite another issue when a culture demands their populus remain stuck centuries behind the rest of the world due to their religion or cultural traditions, and said culture has no means of escaping their own, self-placed shackles.

They, like us, have the power to progess in their own hands. If there is a firewall hardwired in their culture that doesn't allow them to become peaceful productive members of humanity, and they make no effort to remove their own virus, I got no use for them.
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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.

That thought has crossed my mind too. We got human cockroaches right here in our own cities.

I'm sorry your mind is blown with ignorance. I think it was the LSD that blew mine. :rofl I suppose it's good to know that we all get blown, one way or another.
 
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.
Are those "really bad" neighborhoods conspiring to aid and abet pirates?

No? Didn't think so.....NEXT!
 
Are those "really bad" neighborhoods conspiring to aid and abet pirates?

No? Didn't think so.....NEXT!

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.
 
They say a young man that is not liberal has no heart.

They say that a mature man that is not conservative has no brain.

While I do admire your Lennon approach of "Love, love, love" (and I really do) I am grateful that the mature men makes the decisions on national security.

Keep the faith brother.
 
They say a young man that is not liberal has no heart.

They say that a mature man that is not conservative has no brain.

While I do admire your Lennon approach of "Love, love, love" (and I really do) I am grateful that the mature men makes the decisions on national security.

Keep the faith brother.

When wisdom is used at the absence of common sense, you lose both.
 
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.

Don-

The Laws of War only apply to state-to-state conflicts and there is no state in Somalia.

1) We are already doing this, but it is a costly and incomplete solution. It is a big area and there is far to much commercial shipping to organize everybody into convoys.

2, 3) Capturing territory is a really bad idea unless you have some plan for managing that territory. If we learned nothing else from the debacle in Iraq, we should have learned that, at least.

Anyway, there are no "strategic points" because the pirate ships do not need deep-water ports. They can be based almost anywhere along the Somali coast.

4) "It should not be assumed that Somalia will remain a failed state over the longer-term."

This is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning, Don. As a Westerner, you assume that a national government, a "state," is the natural form of government for all people everywhere and that the lack thereof is somehow unnatural.

Your use of the term "failed state" implies that a state is the ideal and that any other type of government is a failure to live up to what everybody acknowledges is the ideal. But not everybody acknowledges or even understands this ideal, Don.

People, in their present form, have been around for a hundred thousand years and the concept of national governments has only existed in a few places for the last thousand years or so. For the great majority of people in the world, the concept of "state" is completely foreign to them.

Westerners see pictures of Africans cutting each other up with machetes and they think, "Tsk, tsk. The lines are drawn badly on the map of Africa. If we just re-draw the map correctly, everybody will be happy in their own state."

But the problem that the Africans face is not that the map of their continent is drawn badly, but that there is a map with any lines on it. National governments are just not natural to the Africans - tribal governments are. And tribes do not now and never have controlled well-defined territories. A village is held by a tribe but, between the villages, they only have influence, not territory.

Also unnatural to Africans is the concept of a court of law that tries individuals for crimes. If an individual has defied the will of his tribe, they will kill or exile him. But, if they have not, then all of his actions can be assumed to have been taken on behalf of his tribe.

Thus, if an individual African has crossed you, the appropriate and entirely natural response is to decimate his tribe. While "indiscriminate shelling" may be abhorrent to the Western mind, the fact is, that is just the way things work in Africa.

Trying to bring an individual to trial is completely foreign and incomprehensible to Africans. They just don't get it. But killing one out of ten members of their tribe and then telling the rest, "don't f*ck with us again;" that is something they understand. That is the way things have always worked in Africa.
 
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.
What laws? What nation has jurisdiction in international waters? (answer: NONE).

There is no law involved here. Pirates are attacking other nations' commercial vessels. While they may be lacking the political orientation of terrorists, they are committing what amounts to an act of war. We should respond in kind.

In the case of the villages, the combatants (pirates) are being given shelter, aid, comfort, and resources by the villagers. The villages are therefore legitimate targets.

If the villagers don't want to be targets, let them turn the pirates out and deny them safe harbor. Their choice entirely.
 
In my experience, people are motivated by only two things: fear and greed. The Somalis have tasted greed. Now let us teach them fear.

Shell the **** out of them when they find out where the pirates reside. But don't go the Israeli bitch route of notifying residents where and when they are going to shell it. Those people know who the pirates are and should have some common sense to know that eventually a pissed off nation is going to retaliate, therefore logic would dictate to stay the **** away from those people.
 
The Laws of War only apply to state-to-state conflicts and there is no state in Somalia.

Onion Eater,

For signatories of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, civilian protections apply in all conflicts as per Article 3. Prisoner of war status, not the protected status of civilians, is a different matter where certain combatants have greater protections under the Geneva Conventions than others.

We are already doing this, but it is a costly and incomplete solution. It is a big area and there is far to much commercial shipping to organize everybody into convoys.

In the short-term shipping plans will need to be shifted. That will entail higher costs, but until the piracy issue is brought under control, both offensive (military) and defensive (avoidance of pirate-infested shipping lanes to the greatest extent possible) will need to be pursued. Rising insurance rates for commercial shippers who transit through the pirate-infested waters may begin to shift shipping practices.

3) Capturing territory is a really bad idea unless you have some plan for managing that territory. If we learned nothing else from the debacle in Iraq, we should have learned that, at least.

Anyway, there are no "strategic points" because the pirate ships do not need deep-water ports. They can be based almost anywhere along the Somali coast.

The pirates cannot use smaller or shallower ports unless they shift their conduct to merely taking hostages and leaving the ships and their cargoes adrift. But doing so would reduce their ability to extract ransoms. Not surprisingly, even as the pirates operate over a large area, they have a few strongholds in which they are especially concentrated e.g., Haradheere, among others.

Before any military action is taken, it would need to be well-planned (overwhelming force available, major contingencies considered, a well-defined exit strategy, etc.). Creating a mechanism in which the nominal Somali government and/or leading Somali tribal elders endorsed efforts and the African Union provided security once the key areas were cleared of pirates would be important. Creation of that mechanism might yield an opportunity to avoid the need for capturing territory. Hopefully, that scenario can still be avoided.

This is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning, Don. As a Westerner, you assume that a national government, a "state," is the natural form of government for all people everywhere and that the lack thereof is somehow unnatural.

Your use of the term "failed state" implies that a state is the ideal and that any other type of government is a failure to live up to what everybody acknowledges is the ideal. But not everybody acknowledges or even understands this ideal, Don.

A failed state would also include a situation in which no group of persons, be they a government, set of tribal elders, leaders of the coastal villages, etc., lacks the ability to exercise jurisdiction over a given territory. I'm less interested over who holds control than whether there is control.

The major point is that there is no entity or person(s) from the territory comprised within Somalia's boundaries that has the ability to curb piracy. That means that the international community will need to take such steps as are necessary to compensate for that reality. One such avenue might involve capturing territory from the pirates and bringing in African Union troops for purposes of maintaining security there.

Also unnatural to Africans is the concept of a court of law that tries individuals for crimes. If an individual has defied the will of his tribe, they will kill or exile him. But, if they have not, then all of his actions can be assumed to have been taken on behalf of his tribe.

Thus, if an individual African has crossed you, the appropriate and entirely natural response is to decimate his tribe. While "indiscriminate shelling" may be abhorrent to the Western mind, the fact is, that is just the way things work in Africa.

Considering that the pirates are attacking the commercial interests of a growing number of outside states in international waters, such states have a right under international law to protect their interests. They can very likely use international maritime laws and other instruments of international law to create a mechanism for prosecuting captured pirates.

Separately, virtually all outside states are signatories to the Geneva Conventions. As a consequence, they are obligated to refrain from indiscriminate bombardment, among other certain practices. Efforts to decimate a tribe would also be problematic against various instruments of international humanitarian law and would constitute either crimes against humanity or war crimes or both.
 
I don't think we should shell them, unless its to clear a landing spot for the Marines.
 
Back
Top Bottom