Obama and the Pirates
A foreign policy "success" may backfire
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
 The
administration of President Barack Obama is certainly owning the
successful rescue
of Americans held hostage by pirates in the seas off Somalia, holding
it up as the epitome of what our rulers would like us to believe
is a pragmatic, tough-minded, and decisive administration, and touting
it as the Obamaites first overseas military success. Yet, barely
a few hours after the dramatic rescue was made – complete with a
display of sharp-shooting skills surpassed by none, and a tale of
derring-do that featured a self-sacrificial captain and a crew determined
to see him safely home – the problem with this sort of grandstanding
was and is all too clear: the pirates are back, and with a vengeance,
hijacking four
more ships in 24 hours.
Which brings us to the question: is the United States military
going to be rescuing each and every victim of pirates in the seven
seas, ceaselessly sailing in whenever some off-course yacht is boarded
by bad guys in the troublesome waters off the East African coast?
If so, they'll be plenty busy for the next decade or so, and they
will doubtless have to cut down on their other activities – say,
guarding our own coastline – in order to play superheroes of the
seas.
 An
earlier rescue, that time carried out by the French, underscored
the dangers inherent in such operations: one
hostage was killed, along with three of the pirates. Aside from
the problematic nature of such military actions, however, is the
practical question of when to attempt a rescue and when to refrain
from doing so. Is every act of piracy on the high seas a casus
belli, insofar as these modern-day incarnations of Captain Hook
and his crew are concerned?
The answer is that it can't be. With Somalia a "failed
state" and its neighbors unable or unwilling to take up
the slack in policing East African waters, the problem is firmly
embedded in the region. The solution, say all too many pundits and
alleged
experts, is for the U.S. military, or some combination of the
U.S. and its allies, to intervene on land and nip the problem at
its supposed source – the poverty and statelessness of Somalia.
Yet this is no solution at all, and it raises the same kind of
open-ended commitment – because the same conditions prevail in,
say, Mexico,
where drug gangs are now competing with the "legal"
gang in Mexico City for control of the country, or at least
some significant portions of it. Kidnapping-for-profit is a burgeoning
industry – indeed, the only industry that is enjoying boom times.
Will the U.S. send in the Marines every time an American citizen
is kidnapped and held for ransom on land? Or does this newfound
anti-piracy militancy apply only to kidnapping on the high seas?
Read
the rest of the article
April
16, 2009
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2009 Antiwar.com
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