I am surprised that there has not been more discussion here about the Somali pirate situation that is currently being played out. Surely this is important enough to at least warrent a mention on the Midday open thread, but no such luck! Just ACORN, Sarah Palin's wardrobe, and spanking amendments, among other worthy notables.
For the quicky update is this:
* Somali pirates captured US flaged ship yesterday
* Crew got the upper hand and recaptured ship along with one pirate
* Three pirates escaped on lifeboat with Captain
* Crew attempted to trade captured pirate for Captain
* Pirates reneged ("Hello? Pirate!" - Captain Jack) and took back captured pirate and kept Captain hostage
Details below...
And just so you know (as an aside), this is all YOUR fault!
LIMBAUGH: You know, people are like, "How come piracy is rebounding?" Piracy is rebounding precisely because of the American left and the European left's lack of intestinal fortitude -- gonads, if you will -- to categorize these people as they really are and to pursue them on that basis.
"We can't torture them." When we don't torture -- whatever we do is called torture. Everything we did to get answers was called torture. We can't do that.
We're mean. We're the bad guys. We put them up in a hellhole called Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We're the bad guys. We're setting a bad example for the world. These people are just from an oppressed minority. We're too big. It's totally understandable why these people would hate us. We're the world's superpower. We steal the resources of the world to enrich ourselves, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah - I 'm sure it was our weakness on torture that gave them the opening they needed to be pirates!
Anyway - here is the situation as it now stands:
Pirates seized a U.S.-flagged cargo ship carrying humanitarian aid for African countries Wednesday. They captured the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, and were holding him in a lifeboat after crew members retook the Maersk Alabama, capturing one of the pirates. A crew member said the pirates reneged on a deal to exchange the pirate for the captain.
The lifeboat had run out of fuel, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
The ship is no headed to its original port in Kenya with relief supplies of cooking oil and other aid.
And since I am a leftist terrorist myself, I will bring you the update from the pirate's point of view:
"We sent reinforcement men to help them," said Da’ud, who declined to give his full name. The reinforcing pirates are in two groups, one of which was already at sea, he said.
...
"The situation will end soon," Da’ud said. "Either the Americans take their man and sink the boat with my colleagues, or we will soon recover the captain and my colleagues in the coming hours.
"But if they, Americans, attempt to use any military operation I am sure that nobody will survive," he said.
That seems to be a pretty pragmatic approach Da'ud is taking. The take the US is expressing is pretty much the same, if a little starker:
A drone made by Boeing Co. has been monitoring the lifeboat since the USS Bainbridge entered the vessel’s vicinity, the U.S. official said.
"There is no way the Bainbridge is going to allow that lifeboat to go anywhere," said Rear Admiral Richard Gurnon, president of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in the Cape Cod town of Bourne. "The pirates are going to quickly realize they have two options: Surrender Phillips, maybe you get in jail for two years, or harm Phillips and face instant death."
Yup, sounds like Da'ud and Admiral Gurnon are pretty much on the same page.
One more quote from that article where Da'ud explains what happened:
After the four pirates took over the Alabama, they were holding the captain at gunpoint when one of the U.S. crew overpowered a pirate and snatched his machine gun, Da’ud said. The other three pirates then took the captain and fled in a lifeboat. They later contacted the Alabama to discuss an exchange, which the two sides agreed on, he said.
Pirates Flee
During the handover, "my colleague, the hostage, jumped into the sea while the three others suddenly refused to free the captain and the four pirates with the captain together fled the scene with the lifeboat" he said.
The pirate’s account jibes with that of a crew member, Ken Quinn, who told CNN in a broadcast phone interview that the crew released the captured pirate after 12 hours in an attempted hostage exchange.
And as is pointed out, above (by Clinton) that lifeboat is now out of gas.
But this brings up an interesting question. What to do now? The situation is becoming increasingly politicized as those on the right are calling for Obama to react and taking any refusal to answer questions as meaning that he doesn't have any:
LIMBAUGH: The president of the United States declined comment about the situation with the Somali pirates and the captain of the U.S. ship who is being held hostage. If you had trouble understanding this, can we get a quick reaction to the pirates -- the Somali pirates? And Obama said, "Thank you, guys, we're talking about housing right now."
This is President Obama voting present, declining to comment. This is President Obama not wanting to address anything that is hard. Addressing things that are hard bring your approval numbers down.
Of course, if he was answering questions they would be complaining about how he is giving his hand away to the pirates. Not that there are a lot of options.
"If we try to do some kind of hostage takedown, that's a whole other ballgame than preventing an act of piracy in progress," Rear Adm. Ted Branch, the Navy headquarters staff officer responsible for monitoring such crises at sea, told a congressional hearing on Somali piracy in February. "You certainly increase the risk to the crew members in that kind of takedown. Therefore, there hasn't been any appetite to do those kinds of [operations]."
But as a result, Navy commanders have been left to rely only on intimidation and coercion to convince pirates to give up, a potentially embarrassing situation for the Obama administration, when pirates capture the world's eyes and keep its most powerful navy at bay equipped with little more than small arms and adequate food rations.
And the politization that the Limbaughs of the world are injecting into this don't make the situation any better, forcing the hand, as it were:
Peter Chalk, an expert on piracy at the Rand Corp., said it is a predicament of the U.S.'s own making, since the only way to stamp out the pirates would be on land, where they have been able to take advantage of Somalia's failed state to set up camps and establish havens in port towns like Caluula, Eyl, Hobyo and Haradheere. The U.S. and its allies have been unwilling to tackle the problem on land, Mr. Chalk said.
"I actually think this naval response is not the right thing to be doing at all," said Mr. Chalk of the presence of the USS Bainbridge, a guided missile destroyer which reached the Maersk Alabama early Thursday morning. "We have ratcheted up the situation."
The ratcheting appears likely to continue. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and central Asia, told an audience in West Palm Beach, Fla., that more naval vessels are en route to the site.
I don't know. God help Captain Richard Philips