read

now that's a haul

The efforts to stop them would probably work better if Inc spawned them a cappy.

"A Delhi class destroyer, INS Mysore"

so do they serve sandwiches?

Ironically, no hands, the pirates have hired private caterers to feed their hostages.

yea i read that, awesome, atleast they take decent care of their hostages

Can't wait until the pirates commandeer the INS Mysore. Hehe.

The Marines will eventually get to reprise their Jeffersonian era role as pirate busters. Nice, from a historical perspective.

meh, id just nerve gas the ship give it a few days to air out and retake it.

Lecter: Agreed. It'll be good to give the Corps some light exercise.

Somalia needs a stable government, or else piracy along its coast will not cease.
The measures in place are just fighting the symptoms, not the cause.

The UN is in there now, been there for like, 15 years trying to help stabilize the place.. Shouldn't that have been plenty of time?

Oh yea.. it's the UN.. nevermind.

break19

Why doesn't Obama just talk to them?

I guess Congress is discussing bailing out the terrorists.

Oddly enough, there was a pretty good shot at stabilization there a year or two ago. A system of courts sprang up that managed to gain a substantial amount of popular support, far more than the U.N.-backed provisional government, and was pretty much kicking ass and spreading the rule of law.

Unfortunately, they were Islamic courts, and that don't fly.

So one of the two northern countries to Somalia sent their army in "to protect the rightful government" with UN and US blessings, popular opinion be damned. They're now bogged down throughly despite occasional missile barrages from offshore US ships, and the place is right back to square one. It's also unlikely to get better, as the two aforementioned northern countries are fighting a proxy war in the area. Funnily enough, the foreign troops are starting to get their butts handed to them by a reforming Islamic faction, which is now even more radical, thus showing once again that we'd have been better off had we simply kept our hands out of it.

Don't ya hate it when people don't show you fawning appreciation for invading their country? I swear, considering how bad these things go, I really wish someone had warned us from the start about foreign entanglements.

All human problems will be solved with violence. It's the lowest common denominator, and (usually) decisive. Need money? Take someone else's, it's easier than working for it yourself. Need resources? Invade and take them! To the victor go the spoils, and then you get to rewrite history since there's no opposing viewpoint.

So who can blame the pirates? It's this or sit in a hut and starve while flies crawl all over you. Hell with that - I'll go out swinging on a pirate ship before begging for scraps from a mosque or waiting beside my hut for UN aid. The pirates, being pushed into a corner by circumstances beyond their control, have decided to push the envelope a little bit. Now they're being rewarded with paid ransoms, a boost in status in their home country, and now international notoriety. Until a bigger, badder force enters the area and deters the pirates, nothing will ever change.

Maybe I'm just pessimistic today. Been a bad day.

(Obligatory link to "You are a pirate" lazytown tune purposefully omitted.)

You are right on, Leber.

One of Limbaugh's Undeniable Truths: "Our world is one governed by the aggressive use of force."

It's unfortunate, but true. Peace comes only after military victory. In this case, peace will come after eliminating pirates. In the case of the war against militant Islam, both parties want peace, but whose peace would we rather have? Only one of the options has freedom also. I reject every one of your premises, IRS.

I submit my expanded arguments for your criticism below. In a somewhat related tangent, Chaos, you wouldn't happen to have any good sites where this sort of debate goes on, would you? I consider this sort of tit-for-tat to be vital in maintaining a sharp intellect, and I rarely get good chances, hence my rather unusual gusto in going about it.

<WALL OF TEXT (LOL)>

Victory? I think we have different ideas as to the meaning of the word. A victory in my book comes once the goals outlined by the aggressor or defender at the commencement of hostilities have been achieved, regardless of means, by one of the parties whether or not the other party agrees to the reality.

In the "War Against Militant Islam", our goal is.... what, exactly? Make them all play nice? Have everyone agree to sit around a campfire and sing kum-ba-ya? If that's our goal, we will fall short of it every time one of them throws a rock (and since when have conservatives been the ones advocating becoming hippies? Politics in this day and age makes less and less sense the more I examine it). This is the main reason I oppose that war- by failing to make a clear set of goals at the onset, we have guaranteed our eventual defeat as we cannot possibly attain the definition of victory. Their goal is to make us bleed, as much and as long as possible. Our victory appears impossible, theirs is attained every day. We are suffering a massive defeat even though our military is winning every direct engagement. I fully support an immediate end, so we can get this unwinnable war over and done with before we hemorrhage so much blood and treasure that our country collapses. My head is not in the clouds, and I know another war will be set to erupt before the guns even cool. For that one, we will have to set some realistic, attainable goals, and avoid this "we will win unless we lose" ideology nonsense. The only way I could support a continuation of the current war is if the time is used to better position ourselves for the next one.

Which brings up my next point- Ideas, being intangible, cannot be shot, stabbed, hung, burned, or blown up. Even if you somehow manage to remove every last person who entertains an idea, that is no guarantee that another person won't come up with it again out of the blue. You can kill all the pirates or radicals today, but until the underlying causes that make people take up the mantle of pirate or radical are dealt with, there will always be more tomorrow. This is not to say that ideas are invulnerable- simply that we must use weapons of a different nature.

The oft-touted "freedom" of ours is indeed our most potent of idealogical weapons, having throughly maimed the divine right of kings, slavery, censorship, and many others as much as it is possible to do so. However, while we use the word often and loudly, the actions we have undertaken are curiously devoid of its spirit.

Freedom is not created or maintained at the point of a gun- the gun is the second level anyway, and subordinate to the heart and mind of the person who picks up the gun. The first level of freedom is simply the ability to say "No" to a demand, and enshrined as our First Amendment. When that fails, the raised gun is the next level, with the ability to oppose (by fear of death or death itself) that which makes the demand, and is given its place as the Second Amendment. When the demand is made by a force we alone cannot overcome, at the third level we can hide our opposition for another place and time, as affirmed by the Fourth Amendment, or gather others in secret so as to create a power that can overcome the demander's, as affirmed in the First Amendment. At the fourth and final level, we have no ability left to deter the demand. We can give into it and surrender our freedom, in whole or in part, or cling to our freedom, regret that we have but one life to give for it, and be sped on our way to our Creator.

At no point in this does our pointing a gun at someone make them free- it makes us free to do as we will, but the person at the point of the gun is certainly not free, as they must surrender either their demand or their life. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I would not want to oppress someone in such a manner when I could simply ignore them for a fraction of the effort. This is why I prefer disengagement over "spreading democracy"- while we may be able to force them to adopt our system of government, we can't force them to like us for it, and the bitterness generated will result in them doing things, by our own rules, that we don't exactly want. In this case, possibly filibustering our troops out of Iraq.

I must say I'm impressed with how quickly and throughly they've taken to the intricacies of our political system. I sincerely hope they can pull it off, as this is a perfect opportunity for us- we can claim to be following the will of a democratic government (thus winning Gulf War II as we have our functional democracy in place and no WMDs, two out of three stated goals, and both of the goals that directly pertain to Iraq), get our troops out of that dustbowl (plugging a hole in our finances and saving a few American lives in the process), and give the Iraq government a massive boost (the agreement, whether it passes or fails, is currently a thinly-disguised attempt to make us put our money where our mouth is and see if we'll leave when asked to by a civil government).

To deal with the pirates is a simple matter. They do it because we've permitted it to be profitable, so we make it unprofitable. No ransoms. No negotiation. Send in the marines to retake ships that would cost more to replace than the operation would expend, and ignore the rest. If they persist, firebomb one as an example while it's sitting in port. The piracy problem will be over within a month. If we feel generous, we could even kick out the illegal fishing boats that had undercut the livelihood of the Somali fishermen, so they'd have a legal trade to ply once again.

</WALL>

Use of "irregardless" = room-temperature IQ.

Thanks for playing.

FYI, only policy wonks who are skittish about saying what we really intend to do define "victory" as you do. Let's be entirely frank: our goal is to kill (or capture, interrogate by whatever means are most effective, and then kill) any militant who poses an unacceptable threat. Will it get rid of the problem entirely--no. But killing them really cuts back on their ability to continue to threaten, to train new threats, and to whelp new threats. Simply put, attrition works.

I personally define an unacceptable threat as any man, woman, or child who smiles when they hear about the killing of Westerners. I'm not concerned with the ideas that drive them to engage in such behavior--if they want to do so, I'm happy for us to kill them. I'm told that they're willing to die for their ideas, so I suppose we're actually doing them a favor.

For the pirates, we needn't retake the ships: we should fuel-air bomb the entire coastline, eliminating every port from which these pirates can sally forth. When they rebuild, we do it again. After enough time, they'll still hate us--but will also know better than to attack us.

It's disheartening how you two manage to turn so many discussions in off-topic into a parade for neo-liberal ideas.

LMAO Lecter. Your "fuel-air-bomb" comment made me think of this line from "Aliens":

Cpl. Hicks: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.
Pvt. Hudson: Fuckin A!

Lecter, thanks for the roundabout information on "irregardless". The possible misunderstanding has been corrected, though it would have been faster had you actually explained why it was potentially confusing rather than leaving me to go out and dig up your reason. Just so you are aware, it is listed in my dictionary as being a synonym of regardless, so irregardless of your opinion on the matter, it is a word with a meaning consistent with my intended meaning. On that note, your use of the equality symbol leaves much to be desired- Might I suggest an Introductory Algebra text so you can familiarize yourself with its use?

P.S. Thanks for playing.

toshiro, once I find a better forum, where this sort of thing is on-topic, I'll pack up my ramblings and move them to more appropriate surroundings.