Obama And The “Moderate Pirate Community”

John Hinderaker is probably correct that, although “it is easy and tempting to ridicule the Obama administration’s inability to take decisive action” against the Pirates who have kidnapped an American sea captain, “there is no good solution to a hostage situation, and patience is probably as good a virtue as any, at least for now.”

Still, anyone who finds it simply impossible to avoid the temptation should begin by reading this hilarious parody of Obama’s effort to “each out to the “Moderate Pirate Community.” (It is a parody, isn’t it?)

UPDATE

And then you could do worse than to turn to Our Reprimitivized Future by Mark Steyn. An excerpt:

…. Obviously, if the United States Navy hanged some eyepatched peglegged blackguard from the yardarm or made him walk the plank, pious senators would rise to denounce an America that no longer lived up to its highest ideals, and the network talking-heads would argue that Plankgate was recruiting more and more young men to the pirates’ cause, and judges would rule that pirates were entitled to the protections of the U.S. constitution and that their peglegs had to be replaced by high-tech prosthetic limbs at taxpayer expense.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, which over the centuries did more than anyone to rid the civilized world of the menace of piracy, now declines even to risk capturing their Somali successors, having been advised by Her Majesty’s Government that, under the European Human Rights Act, any pirate taken into custody would be entitled to claim refugee status in the United Kingdom and live on welfare for the rest of his life….

UPDATE

Actually, there was “a good solution,” and this was it:

April 12 (Bloomberg) — Sharpshooters firing from the fantail of a U.S. Navy destroyer killed three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain in a lifeboat, ending a five-day ordeal that unfolded amid a surge in piracy off Somalia’s coast.

Richard Phillips, 53, captain of the Maersk Alabama, was untied, pulled from the lifeboat and brought unharmed aboard the USS Bainbridge, said Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command….

Say What? (1)

  1. K April 11, 2009 at 4:19 pm | | Reply

    Hinderaker inadvertently provides supplies a perfect example of (mis)framing the argument.

    If, as he says: “there is no good solution…”

    Then why bother to have our ships there? Why bother discussing the matter or terms with the pirates?

    Did they send that team of FBI people over to deal with something that can have no good solution?

    The answer of course is that some outcomes are better than others. And our people are supposed to get the best from what is possible.

    As long as nations won’t agree to stamp out the piracy ruthlessly it will continue and grow. Hillary is right in recognising one nation can’t do it alone.

Say What?