“Steer the hostile prow to Barb’ry’s shores,” wrote an anonymous poet, a veteran of the Battle of
Bunker Hill, “release thy sons, and humble Africa’s power.”
Finally, some voice of reason out there. The only way Somali pirates will stop doing what they are doing, is to fight them. If we keep paying them off, and continue this policy of not fighting them, then they will only continue to do it. And what do you know, piracy has only gotten worse in that region. So whom ever these so-called experts are, that continue to give shipping companies this advice of not fighting back and just paying them off, have done more to increase piracy in that region than anything else. And it seems we have learned this lesson before in the past. –Head Jundi
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NOVEMBER 22, 2008
How to Deal With Pirates
By MICHAEL B. OREN
The rise of piracy is threatening international trade and raising complex questions. The only way to end the scourge is to respond aggressively, says Michael B. Oren.
The attack began when an unidentified vessel drew alongside a merchant ship in the open sea and heavily armed brigands stormed aboard. “They made signs for us all to go forward,” one of the frightened crewmen remembered, “assuring us in several languages that if we did not obey their commands they would massacre us all.” The sailors were then stripped of all valuables and most of their clothing and locked in the hull of their own captured ship. They would be held in unspeakable conditions, subsisting on eight ounces of bread a day and threatened with beating and even beheading should they resist. “Death would be a great relief and more welcome than the continuance of our present situation,” one of the prisoners lamented.
