We’re all savoring the Navy’s Easter Sunday rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from the hands of Somali pirates. Once again, we have reason to appreciate the men and women of the navy and indeed all our service people around the world.
But this rescue only highlights the larger issue: how is the civilized world to deal with piracy, which is a crime against the law of nations and civilization itself? The answer is simple – or it should be simple, at least: ruthlessly and without pity or remorse.
It’s a rule easily understood by all: if you choose to live like an outlaw, expect to die like an outlaw. Thus has it ever been from the Romans who cleared the pirates from Mare Nostrum to the British and American navies who’ve kept the sea lanes clear over the centuries. In a UK Telegraph piece about piracy, noted historian John Keegan observes:
Such ships must act promptly and ruthlessly, as piracy will spread unless it is stamped out. The Gulf of Aden is an exit from the Mediterranean, one of the world’s most important seas, crossed annually by thousands of ships. So our campaign must be ruthless and pitiless: pirate ships must be sunk on sight and the crews left to swim to safety, if it can be reached.
Many would complain about such tactics but, in my opinion, pirates have no rights – indeed, it will be vital to exclude human rights lawyers from the anti-piracy campaign. To bring any captives to Europe or America for trial would probably be to grant them their dearest wish, which is to secure entry to a new life in the First World.
Writing in the New York Post, Col. Ralph Peters is far less restrained on the subject:
Historically, civilized nations understood how to handle pirates: When captured, pirates were hanged. When found, their bases were destroyed. That worked. But threatening to put one pirate in a thousand in a posh European cell where he gets free visits from a prostitute isn’t much of a deterrent when a single successful raid on a ship can bring in millions of dollars.
Yeah, “citizens of the world” will cry that “You can’t just hang pirates!” Sure you can. It’s easy. If you’re short of rope, wire will do. The only serious question arises once the noose is around the pirate’s throat: Should we drop him over the side and let the rope snap his neck, or raise him up on a spar and let him suffocate slowly?
But the Somalis are now making noises and threats about retaliation – all done, of course, with an air of wounded innocence that would be quite touching were it not laughable:
“Every country will be treated the way it treats us,” said Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the pirate den of Gaan, a central Somali town.
“In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying,” he told The Associated Press by telephone. “We will retaliate for the killings of our men.”
He gave no details and it was not clear in what way the pirates could retaliate, though some fear they could take their revenge on the hundreds of other foreign nationals they hold on seized ships. . . .
Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said the American operation “could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it.”
Jamac Habeb, a 30-year-old self-proclaimed pirate, told The Associated Press that the three pirates’ deaths were “a painful experience.” Speaking from the pirate hub, Eyl, he added: “this will be a good lesson for us.”
“From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill them,” Habeb said. “Now they became our number one enemy,” he said of U.S. forces.
These threats show the pirates’ ultimate folly. Once they start killing crews, then God’s wrath will shortly descend on them and the hunt to extermination will be on.
Because there’s no law for outlaws.
