April 14, 2009
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Matt Duss
Obama Passes Pirate Test
On Sunday evening, U.S. Navy SEAL snipers ended a five-day hostage crisis on the high seas, simultaneously shooting and killing three pirates and freeing their prisoner, Richard Phillips, the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama. A fourth pirate had surrendered earlier, seeking medical attention for injuries sustained during a struggle with the Alabama's crew. Commenting yesterday on the successful resolution of the situation, President Barack Obama expressed relief at the rescue of Phillips, noting that his safety had been "our principal concern" throughout the crisis. Obama also said that his administration was "resolved to halt the rise of piracy" in the waters off of Somalia, where pirates have attacked 67 vessels since the beginning of 2009, and 200 since 2008. Journalist David Axe notes that "captured vessels netted some $20 million in ransom last year. Today, some dozen vessels and 200 seafarers are still being held in rowdy pirate towns in lawless northern Somalia." Three more ships have been hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden just since the rescue of Phillips, and pirates have threatened future attacks against American vessels and crews in revenge for the killing of the three hostage-takers.
THE TIMELINE: After shadowing the Maersk Alabama through the Indian Ocean for several hours, the four teen-aged pirates crept aboard the ship on Wednesday, but the 20-man American crew fought back. Captain Phillips offered himself up as a hostage in order to ensure the safety of his crew, and the pirates took him along as they fled in the ship's motorized lifeboat. Soon after, the Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge arrived on the scene, with FBI hostage negotiators on board. "According to Somali elders...in the coastal fishing village of Harardhere,the pirates were demanding $6 million in ransom and safe passage to shore in exchange for Phillips's release." The local elders said the negotiations collapsed Friday over whether the pirates would be arrested. On Friday, Obama received several briefings on the situation, and the White House said the president gave "the Department of Defense policy guidance and certain authorities to allow U.S. forces to engage in potential emergency actions." On Saturday evening, "dozens of Navy SEALs parachuted from C-17 transport aircraft into the sea, making their way with inflatable Zodiacs to the Bainbridge." The pirates were induced to accept a tow when their lifeboat ran out of fuel far from the Somali coast. On Sunday, monitoring the lifeboat through rifle scopes, Navy SEAL snipers watched as two pirates raised their heads out of a lifeboat hatch, with "the third pirate moved toward the captain, pointing his AK-47 at his back. Thinking Phillips was about to be killed, the on-scene commander gave the snipers the order to fire."
TEST PASSED: The President's conservative critics had clearly been preparing to exploit the crisis as proof of Obama's weakness in the face of provocation. Upon the news of the hijacking, the National Review's Andrew McCarthy tauntingly asked "what our new commander-in-chief proposes to do about it.” Writing in the Weekly Standard, Seth Cropsey advocated "taking the fight to the pirates," i.e. an overly militaristic response, and wondered whether the president had the guts to follow through. The Wall Street Journal, drawing a tenuous parallel between piracy and legal threats against Bush administration officials for war crimes, editorialized that "if the U.S. government won't protect American citizens from the legal anarchy of postmodern Europe, how can we expect it to protect American sailors from the premodern anarchy of Somalia?" As it was, Obama -- while clearly mindful of the larger implications of piracy for U.S. interests -- made the life of the American captain, and not the maintenance of perceptions of American strength, the immediate objective of the operation. Having explored and exhausted non-violent solutions to the situation, and with the captain's life in apparent jeopardy, deadly force was authorized and used effectively, and the situation brought to a satisfactory conclusion with a welcome lack of bluster that would have been unlikely under the previous administration. After having cued up their outrage for Obama's expected failure, conservatives have generally been silent in the face of his actual success.
AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM: University of Kentucky assistant professor Robert Farley, while noting that the actual financial and economic impact of piracy is extremely small, writes that "the industrial nations of Europe, Asia and North America are the primary beneficiaries of free ocean transit. ... The navies of these states have a responsibility to keep the seas free, and this means concerted, multilateral action against Somali pirates." Axe also writes that "a wholesale revamping of American strategy for defeating pirates" is needed. "The U.S. must push for improved cooperation by all the nations with a stake in the conflict. The Alabama incident should generate the political capital to make such change possible." In Somalia, as in Afghanistan, security threats are generated by a lack of governance, a larger and more complex problem that cannot simply be solved by resolute shows of force. Somalia has had no effective government since 1991. With no coast guard or military to defend its territorial waters, Somalis, many of whose livelihoods depended on fishing, "could only watch as foreign trawlers emptied the seas of fish. To survive, many took up piracy instead." Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdoon told the Christian Science Monitor, "At the moment, we have no ability to protect the waters or defend against the pirates." The current government controls only a small portion of the capital, and little of its 1,879 miles of coastline. "No one wants to help us with this. I don't know why, because it is a problem for everyone now," Gobdoon said, noting that concerned nations "send ships, but we need stability on land."
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