Awesome! Pirates, you messed with the wrong country. And your exploded heads, courtesy some sharp-shootin’ Navy SEALs, is your reward.
Good on President Obama for authorizing it. He correctly recognized that these are not people you can negotiate with, and acted accordingly. This is a great day for America.
Now let’s hope Obama can learn from this success, and extrapolate it to the rest of the world’s bad guys. Hell, let’s just hope he can extrapolate it to dealing with the inevitable pushback from the pirates themselves.
Because while this is unquestionably a success, it is only the first level in a much tougher game. The stakes only get higher.
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This entire scenario was one of conservative values in action. The crew fought back when boarded, instead of just standing by while something happened to them. The Captain chose to take himself hostage – he wasn’t forced to or directed to. When given the opportunity to escape, he attempted it – he didn’t just sit in the lifeboat and “hope” someone else would take care of him.
The military concocted plans and contingencies, which were not dictated from on high, except to authorize them in advance in broad strokes. Local military commanders were allowed to make their own plan and then execute it. (Decentralization generally increases innovation, and it also decreases the time it takes to make a decision. Communication with higher-ups takes time.)
The Captain’s life was a priority. While I believe in destroying pirates at every opportunity, the end goal of that is to keep civilians safe – civilians which include the crews of our ships who are victims of these crimes. His life was not risked needlessly, but nor was the risk of his death so paralyzing to the decision makers that the pirates were allowed to get away richer and emboldened.
America did not wait for the UN to give us permission to act, or for an international coalition to be built. We didn’t seek a thumbs up in advance from Somalia’s “government,” such as it is. We didn’t (at least I hope we didn’t) waste a second wondering if we were to blame for piracy. We didn’t question our legal authority to act in our own interests on the high seas. We defended more than a ship or even shipping lanes. We defended our sovereignty.
Individuals were given freedom to act, and they did. Some were heroes. Individuals who acted badly were held accountable. With extreme prejudice.
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So what have we learned that we can take forward? First, there are the pirates.
They will not be nice to you if you’re nice to them. They aren’t pirates because they yearn for universal health care or because they are upset over the AIG bonuses. They don’t care that George Bush insisted he wasn’t fighting a war on Islam, or that Obama said the same thing. They make easy millions from the capitulation of governments and shipping companies, and the lack of freedom in their homeland makes more honest entrepreneurship much more difficult.
We have learned that giving them ransom only emboldens and encourages them, placing more and more lives at risk. We know that they don’t negotiate in good faith. We have learned that a failure to act invites further aggression. Their success is the loss of the very fabric of civilized society. They must be killed, ever and over, until piracy disappears because to be a pirate is to virtually guarantee death.
We have learned that no one else in the world is willing or able to come to our sailors’ rescue. We must act for ourselves. And I’d say we’ve learned that ship crews ought to wear sidearms.
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But it doesn’t end with pirates. All of the same lessons can be applied to our enemies.
Nations willing to kill those who speak out against their government, or those who are willing to reduce their populations to eating grass and bark, will not respond to speeches. They are unimpressed with international condemnation. They have just enough enablers in the international community to make organizations like the UN useless. When they are willing to negotiate, they aren’t doing it in good faith.
What makes it more difficult, of course, is knowing when to use this kind of force. No one is suggesting taking out China’s President Hu if we have a trade dispute.
But we must always carry our big stick, even when we speak softly. Diplomacy with rogue nations is useless without backing it up with the credible threat of force.
By invading Afghanistan and Iraq, George Bush correctly let the world know that if you attack the US, and if you ignore your international obligations, the consequences will be serious. On a small scale, and in actions inconsistent with much of his rhetoric, Obama sent a similar signal.
Good for him. I hope he continues to project American strength around the world. If other countries want to come with us, that’s great. If not, we’ll just have to stand alone. But we must stand. If we allow ourselves to lay down, as Europe largely has done by ceding their national defense to us, the civilized world as we know it might not get back up again.
