The Price Of Obama’s Inaction
We now know the price to be paid for President Obama’s inaction with the Somali pirates. We know because they’ve hijacked another boat, this time capturing another 16 hostages:
Pirates captured a U.S.-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat with 16 crew including 10 Italians on Saturday in the latest hijacking in the busy Gulf of Aden.
“We can confirm that 10 Italians were kidnapped but we have no further details,” an Italian foreign ministry official said.
Andrew Mwangura, of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, said the crew were believed to be unharmed on the tugboat, which he added was operated from the United Arab Emirates. He said the tugboat was towing two barges at the time of capture but there were no details on their cargo. “This incident shows the pirates are becoming more daring and violent,” Mwangura told Reuters by phone.
Why shouldn’t they be daring? It’s not like President Carter Obama will do anything to strike fear in their hearts.
Had this happened under either President Bush, the response would’ve been predictable, swift and violent. They would’ve made examples of the pirates plying the waters, then they would’ve literally struck them where they live.
Doing nothing and hoping the problem disappears isn’t a policy. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. This is what happens when people elect someone who hasn’t had time to think military strategies through. This is what happens when the commander-in-chief is reluctant to trust his officers.
That’s why experienced foreign policy and national security experts think the Obama administration will be as ineffective and timid as the Carter administration. Based on what’s happened thus far, there’s no reason for them to change their minds.
Ed’s analysis is right on the money:
This emphasizes the need to react swiftly, using the full might of our power, when piracy arises. In a real sense, this is asymmetrical warfare, only with a profit motive rather than theological extremism pushing it. If we scale down our response to the same level as theirs, or incrementally rather than overwhelmingly higher, then we play on their ground and not ours. If we expect to have a realistic deterrent in our navy, then we have to allow them to unleash their full fury on the pirates, all of the pirates, when they dare to attack American shipping, and Western shipping in general.
The principle behind using overwhelming force in this situation is simple: Hitting the pirates and their home bases ups the ante. It tells them that for every cost they inflict on us, we’ll inflict five times as much on them. Let’s see how long they want to play under those terms.
The price for their piracy thus far has been minimal to nonexistent. It isn’t dissimilar to southwest companies hiring illegal immigrants because they represented cheap labor. When raids were increased on those companies, the hiring of illegal aliens died because they no longer represented cheap labor anymore.
These pirates haven’t paid a heavy price yet. How will they react if there’s an actual cost in terms of blood and treasure? Perhaps they’d be brave enough to continue. If they were brave and we had a real commander-in-chief, a real commander-in-chief would give a simple order: As long as they attempt ship hijackings, their ships and their villages will get turned into rubble.
It’s a shame we don’t have a real commander-in-chief. It’s a crying shame they didn’t get the memo that nobody messes with our VP.
Technorati Tags: Pirates, Hijackings, Gulf Of Aden, Somalia, President Obama, Jimmy Carter, Pacifism, Democrats, President Bush, Military, George Herbert Walker Bush, Republicans
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
April 12th, 2009 at 7:36 am
hi, i’m a dem. and i thought we should have been there 24 hours sooner. the repubs, would have been there quick . but lieing to the world is not the way to get sadaam, one well placed shot would have saved 2500 lives. they need to take a couple frogmen and attach a cable to the raft and slowly drag it out to sea. them samalis haven’t seen the other world. then their buddies couldn’t get to them .they need to sink the raft by drilling a hole in the holl under water ,they have these drills because my dad drilled holes under water in san diego when they built a marine railway for a marina. when you are having to swim for, it things change , and guns get wet. good luck capt griffin.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:36 am
hi, i’m a dem. and i thought we should have been there 24 hours sooner. the repubs, would have been there quick . but lieing to the world is not the way to get sadaam, one well placed shot would have saved 2500 lives. they need to take a couple frogmen and attach a cable to the raft and slowly drag it out to sea. them samalis haven’t seen the other world. then their buddies couldn’t get to them .they need to sink the raft by drilling a hole in the holl under water ,they have these drills because my dad drilled holes under water in san diego when they built a marine railway for a marina. when you are having to swim for, it things change , and guns get wet. good luck capt griffin.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:36 am
hi, i’m a dem. and i thought we should have been there 24 hours sooner. the repubs, would have been there quick . but lieing to the world is not the way to get sadaam, one well placed shot would have saved 2500 lives. they need to take a couple frogmen and attach a cable to the raft and slowly drag it out to sea. them samalis haven’t seen the other world. then their buddies couldn’t get to them .they need to sink the raft by drilling a hole in the holl under water ,they have these drills because my dad drilled holes under water in san diego when they built a marine railway for a marina. when you are having to swim for, it things change , and guns get wet. good luck capt griffin.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:57 am
This is what you get when you elect a “do nothing” lawyer. He has no idea what to do about anything, and unless his speech write puts it on the teleprompter, he can’t even talk.
I don’t think this is the “big test” Biden talked about in the campaign, but you can see from this he won’t handle something bigger any better either.
This guy just took us down a huge bunch in foreign relations with his big “apologizing” mouth in Europe, and now we are supposed to be respected overseas? Ha! That’s a joke,
And on top of that, this guy has surrounded himself with a bunch of know nothing, yes-men who are supposed to “advise” him in all matters foreign. This is not going to end well, at all!
What ever happened to true, honest, hard hitting Americans? Where have they gone? Can we ever get our mojo back? I think we had better!
April 12th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Look like Obama called in the order to rescue the captain that ended successfully with the captain being retrieved and the pirates being killed or captured (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iqznz3bUMKIUbrDYAUHHuMQ4vyJAD97H6E300).
And on top of all that, he got his little girls a puppy.
So up yours, Gary Gross and comsense08.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
It’s great that the captain was rescued. What’s still to be determined is whether President Obama will have the military eliminate the pirates’ safe haven.
If the rescue is the last of President Obama’s actions against these pirates, they won’t have an incentive to stop the hijackings.