Ending Somali piracy: few options for US forces

On 4/15/2009 5:03 PM Nonnymus "tweaked" on too much Starbucks said:
Tom K wrote:
"JCarnaghie" wrote in message
...
Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"Tom K" wrote:
Brilliant... I guess you didn't bother to read the article. They
can't even find them. There's 1900 miles of coast line. And when
they do find a boat, they can't tell the difference between real
fishermen and pirates. And last time we tried something on land
in that country, it resulted in the real life case of "Black Hawk
Down".
The only real way might be to pull the ships a little farther
away from land, declare an exclusion zone and say anything
originating on the coast that goes past that point will be sunk.
Period. Even that is iffy at best.

It might be iffy, but it certainly would put a crimp in the pirates
operations. No small boat fishermen go 100 miles offshore to legally
"fish" so it would not impact the legal folks.
The real "problem" is that there is no functioning government, and
successful pirates make lots of money without any apparent risk.
Kill a few dozen of them, and "properly" display their remains and
you might see a real difference in the number wanting to go
"pirating.".
Meanwhile, give the ship's crews some appropriate arms and some
training to increase their self defense capability.
Cheers,
John in LALALand (On the Left Coast)

So... you want to give high end weapons to cargo ships with crew from
countries like Liberia, etc? You can't give the cargo ships
something simple like guns if the pirates have rocket launchers. So
if you give cargo ships high end weapons, how long before those high
end weapons are sold on the black market?

--Tom

Why is it any of our business what a Liberian ship carries in the way
of defensive arms? I thought we were discussing American ships. I
believe we armed merchant ships during wartime, so I see little
difference.The exclusion zone would be a good thing, since it could be
defended from the air. . . warning shots followed by true interdiction.

Another alternative would be to let groups of Americans charter ships
and sail them deliberately in harm's way. Aboard would be the
Americans, but secretly armed to the teeth. When the pirates approach
the vessel, they'd get the surprise of their soon-to-be brief life.
The Americans could keep the trophies- appropriately mounted- and it'd
be a great version of going on an African Safari.

George, Ray or Cal could arrange the hunting charter.

You might be a redneck if you sail a fishing charter off the coast of
Somalia and use c4 explosives and that's just to catch the fish! Any
pirate gets wind of American rednecks using C4 to fish ain't going
nowhere off land period. Get 'er done!

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Brian M. Kochera
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