Sailing into the pirates

I, for one, was glad to see President Obama give the green light to the Navy to go after the pirates who held the captain of the Maersk Alabama. However, this brought about an unusual situation for me and a dilemma for the president.

The evening after the Navy Seals rescued the captain, I found myself disagreeing with Sean Hannity, of Fox News, when he said he thought that President Obama jumped too quickly to take credit for the rescue, when his approach was the natural course for a president to follow. As I am used to agreeing with most of Sean's points of view, his opinion troubled me, but I believe he is actually upset with Obama's overall approach to the security of our nation and our approach to countries such as Iran and North Korea and that he found that the notion of complimenting Obama stuck in his throat.

The same evening, I agreed with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, when she said if President Obama was right to close Guantanimo Bay and oppose long confinement of detainees without access to a court's ruling on the legality of their confinement, then the Obama must be wrong to insist on confining detainees without the same rights at Baghram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. Obama's administration has now appealed a judge's ruling that detainees at Baghram must have access to a court to test the legality of their confinement. Maddow, an Air America talk show host, is usually miles to the left of me, and I found her good for the goose, good for the gander approach to this subject refreshing. I don't agree that we have to give such rights to terrorists, but I agreed with her that the president should be consistent in his approach.

As much as I appreciate the work of the Navy Seal snipers in killing the pirates and rescuing the captain, this is a very complicated situation and is already escalating in ways which cannot be thrilling Obama. Should we attack the pirates bases on land in Somalia, which is a large country with a huge seacoast? There is virtually no government of Somalia to speak of, and the pirates are almost certainly living among the general populace.

At present, sea laws and the laws of some countries complicate the arming of these large vessels' crews. Getting cooperation to attack the pirates hideouts or arm the crews would be very difficult. But the pirates have received hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom in recent years and some of that money may be going to fund terrorists.

The best solution I have heard is similar to the air marshall plan we use on airliners. The armed sea marshalls would board random transport vessels, so the pirates would not know if a ship they were trying to hijack was protected by sea marshalls or not. I would have more than one marshall per team, so that there would be enough "firepower" to defend against pirate attacks. It may not be a perfect plan, but it should cost much less than defending so many ships with Navy vessels and crews. It might also avoid the need to attack the pirates' bases.