Navy commander: Trio of shots ended sea standoff
US captain's rescue raises stakes in piracy ops
Q+A - Who are the Somali pirates?
Somalia: Puntland Demands Support to Fight With Pirates
US Considers Attacks on Somali Pirates' Land Bases
Somali pirates release wave of terror with new strategy
Hijacked Italian, Egyptian vessels taken to northern Somalia
Somali Insurgents Reportedly Fire Mortars at US Congressman in Mogadishu
I was doing my damnedest to avoid discussing this because I thought of it as an unnecessary annoyance and could not understand why the entire world was letting a growing number of Somali (P)irates hold them hostage. I was happy to see that we were working to take out those pirates. I was wondering why we did not have snipers on them but we did.
There is a simple solution here now and Somalia has supplied it! It would be nice if we could feed the people there and get cooperation but that is not going to happen. The firing of mortars at Representative Payne's plane shows it is not even safe to be there. We do know where the Pirates come from. We know where they live. We know where they are. I listened to an expert yesterday and for once he had it right. Must be because he was foreign. Anyway he said he knows where they come from. He said it was two clans in northern Somalia. I hope to hell someone is talking to him on the sly.
Somali pirate's made $80 million from ransom's last year. We pissed them off! They have made a lucrative business of intimidating the world's shipping interests. It has become a game to them and they up to now have killed no one. We had to react the way we did but the ante has now been upped! Black Hawk Down taught us years ago we can not even help these people. We certainly can not leave them to fester either.
We can deal with this but I have not heard the right answers yet at least not from our so called experts. With one million miles of ocean to cover there, there is only one way to do this. We do not have enough ships in the world to monitor and secure all shipping interests in the world in the Indian ocean the way it is done now but a 3 pronged attack at the issue would bear instant results.
* 1. Let Puntland monitor the coastline and the gulf given the equipment they need. Seems like a good business for them and it would be a win, win for us. 2. Sounds like a great job for unmanned drones. One of the links above show we are thinking of attacking pirate bases. We should do that but should be watching with the drones land and sea areas. Lastly 3. This most definitely will work and I can not believe it is not employed. We have already moved the shipping lane to now 20 miles off the coast. That should be a safe zone! Anyone in it must be preregistered. It can be as wide as specified with a one mile buffer zone. Any little boat screwing around in there should be immediately sunk no questions asked. These guys are obvious as they did with the Alabama they harass ships for weeks. This is no game and we must start treating this like the serious issue it is!
James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
www.anaveragepatriot.com
