Our Navy SEALS repaid us for the cost of their training today.
(CNN) — The American captain of a cargo ship held hostage by pirates jumped overboard from the lifeboat where he was being held, and U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed three of his four captors, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.
Capt.Capt. Richard Phillips was helped out of the water off the Somali coast and is uninjured and in good condition, the official said. He was taken aboard the USS Bainbridge, a nearby naval warship.
At the time of the shootings, the fourth pirate was aboard the USS Bainbridge negotiating with officials, the source said. That pirate was taken into custody.
Maersk Line Limited issued a statement saying it was informed at 1:30 p.m. by the U.S. government that Phillips had been rescued. John Reinhart, president and CEO, called Phillips’ wife, Andrea, to tell her the good news.
The ship’s crew was “jubilant” when they received word, the statement says.
Nicely done.
In other news, the Reds are beating the Pirates 2-0 in the bottom of the fifth inning.
Hmm, wonder what happens to the next Americans they catch? Well, got to be careful. Good job seals!
If you are capturing hostages it does you no good to kill them. You don’t get any ransom that way, and it only gets you killed. If you just intend to kill Americans for revenge, then you are asking for yourself and those around you, maybe your family onshore, to be killed in massive retaliation. I suspect that for awhile at least when they see ships flying American flags they may want to stay away.
If Bush had been in charge, we would have paid a ransom, the pirates would have killed the captain, the US would have bombed a village in Venezuela in revenge, killing a large number of civilians.
A note to the pirates: You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.
.
PARIS (GMA) April 11, 2009 – Navy commandos stormed a French sailboat held by pirates off the Somali coast in an assault triggered by threats the passengers would be executed. But one hostage was killed in the operation, demonstrating the risks of a military operation against sea bandits.
Four hostages, including a small child, were freed Friday, French Defense Minister Herve Morin said. Two pirates also were killed and three others were taken prisoner. They are to be brought to France for criminal proceedings, joining 12 pirates already jailed and awaiting trial here.
It was the third time the French have freed hostages from the hands of pirates but the first time a hostage had been killed.
…
There were 164 acts of piracy in the area in 2008, 43 involving hostage-takings, according to the French Defense Ministry. There have been 65 attacks so far this year, and 15 vessels are currently held by pirates with 243 hostages in the hands of pirates.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The fourth pirate should get a military trial tomorrow……
and be hanged Tuesday.
nalbar
Not a very Progressive solution, now, is it?
Since when is a fair trail and swift justice not ‘progressive’?
There is a reason piracy has been treated harshly for centuries. It’s because pirates ALWAYS go after the weak and vulnerable. That is what they do.
Yes, it is true that this particular country is failed, and that other countries are fishing in their waters and dumping waste. But if the pirates are altruistic victims then why don’t they capture the fishing boats and sell the fish at the docks? Why don’t they capture one of the ‘dump ships’ and show the world? Could it be that there is no large profit in the fish and the ‘dump ships’ are armed?
Far easier to kidnap innocents and threaten them.
You give ‘progressives’ a bad name by implying criminals should not be punished. These are not pot smugglers, they a criminals that attack ships with grenade launchers.
BTW, there is nothing ‘nationalistic’ in what I am saying. I have not advocated America policing these seas and ‘showing strength’. There is nothing nationalistic in demanding justice for a crime. If a ‘dump ship’ was caught, or an illegal fishing trawler caught, I would advocate swift justice for them also.
nalbar
I find your response disingenuous.
And for the record I have never implied that criminals should not be punished.
“pirates ALWAYS go after the weak and vulnerable. That is what they do.“
LOOOOOOOOL! Name any type of criminal, or predator, or national leader with conquest in mind that goes after the strong and invulnerable.
Just sayin’:
Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates
Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal dumping and trawling
Monday, 5 January 2009
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Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains.
They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labelling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.
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US captain held by Somali pirates is freed
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave.
Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.
If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century”.
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.” This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live.” In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed.
Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers.
The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”
This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them.
They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence”.
No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.” William Scott would understand.
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won’t act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.”
The pirate smiled, and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.” Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?
j.hari@independent.co.uk
What dd wrote is very important to take into account here. Somalia’s ocean is being used asa nuclear waste dumping ground, while its fishing grounds are being destroyed by multi natonally based trawlers. Piracy seems like a logical outcome. I’m sure the powerful nations will not deal with the (obvious) root causes, but instead capitalize on the terrorist aspect of pirates.
Unfortunately, the only solution in this situation is to make piracy very costly to the pirates.
Kill them immediately.
How very, very Progressive of you.
I agree that piracy is being turned to by some Somalis because of what’s happened to the fishing industry, plus the lack of central government and a host of other issues.
That said, if you are a pirate you are like a bank robber. There’s surely lots of reasons why you turned to crime, but that doesn’t absolve you of committing the crime. If you’re committing piracy and you’re lucky enough to be captured you should be put on trial. If you get shot in the act, you got what comes with the job description.
The clear solution is to correct the economic injustices here and work to create some kind of civil order AND to make sure that piracy is too high risk and too low profit for anyone to pursue.
I agree with you, Bob, but what I was reacting to was “kill them immediately”. Maybe I do not understand what progressive really means, but I have always thought that killing, especially immediate killing, was antithetical to any kind of progressive ideal.
Am I wrong?
It depends on the motives of those in question. If terrorists, for example, were holding someone hostage I would have no qualms with a shoot to kill order because you have to assume that they plan to kill the hostage and are likely to do so.
In this present case, the pirates were given every opportunity to surrender the hostage and they were only taken out when perceived to be directly threatening the hostage.
I think “kill them immediately” is just a reactionary emotion.
My point is that it is completely counter-progressive as I understand progressiveness. I don’t really know whether I am progressive or what, but it would never occur to me to think about killing someone, immediately or otherwise. The only possible justification for killing is if it is the only possible way to prevent oneself or someone else from being killed or seriously hurt. Killing as a default option is not acceptable to me at all. It is the ultimate violation of human rights.
For years we’ve participated in using Somalia as if it’s our own personal toilet bowl. Eventually, people do strike back. Especially when they’re hurt enough-and when they’re sick enough-and when enough of them have died.
No guilt and no regrets from us, I guess. A little too much “nationalism” in this comments section for me. Guess I’m not a good German, today.
“A little too much “nationalism” in this comments section for me.“
Way too much.
And I thought this was supposed to be “a progressive community”!
Could you point me to the ‘nationalism’ statement you refer to?
nalbar
“Asked what he thought of the pirates who seized the boat, [second mate} Quinn said: ‘They’re just hungry.’ “
So?
Are we apologists for kidnapping and murder, now?
Hijacking people and holding them for ransom is not an acceptable answer to hunger.
If you have a problem with that take it to Second Mate Quinn. He’s the one who said it, not me.
It may be an explanation but it’s not an excuse. They are holding over 200 people hostage. I expect them to be treated as violent common criminals, not humanitarian cases.
Did I present it as an excuse? In fact, did I present it as anything at all other than a quote from a news story?
Actually yes you did present as an excuse.
Why else use ONLY that particular quote.
Parse it all you want, that is what you intended.
nalbar
LOL! I just love the way some people are so sure they can read minds over the intertubes!
Two things come to mind:
For your information, I was mostly interested in what Second Mate Quinn said because it seemed remarkable that someone who had just escaped from a pirate attack would have that particular insight uppermost in his mind, and it made me wonder just how widespread among potential pirate victims that level of compassionate understanding might be.
Not surprised to hear this comment by the Second Mate. Desperate people will commit desperate deeds. You’d be amazed at what people who have nothing left to lose, will do.
While I do not condone criminal conduct, I do not condone abusing people either.
In this old world-you’re either part of the solution-or you’re part of the problem.
What a sad statement from the Second Mate that is. I guess dying from hunger-while ships from the wealthiest nations in the world dump toxic waste and steal your only source of food-isn’t quite all its cracked up to be, eh?
When you make the mess-you are expected to clean up the mess. It is your responsibility. Period.
The United States and all the western democracies that have helped to destroy this small third world country have had a hand in creating this mess. I guess it is easier to just shoot people-but that really doesn’t do anything to solve the issues, does it?
If the problem really is with people dumping or fishing illegally, why aren’t the pirates focusing on those ships?
No, methinks those abuses just provide a rationale for hijacking anything for ransom.
For this to stop, I think ships need to proactively fire on any craft approaching them in a hostile way.
I found the First Mate’s reaction extremely interesting from a human point of view.
You know, the more I think about that statement from Second Mate Quinn about the pirates “just being hungry,” it really gets to me.
America has quite the obesity problem. Literally. I’m not sure in a country where being overweight is one of our biggest health issues, we would have any particular insight into a country where people are chronically suffering from hunger.
I know that a crime has been committed, but people are just a little too gung-ho for my tastes, on this subject.
I’ve seen pictures of people from Somalia-skin and bones. And people in Somalia literally do die from hunger. They literally die from it.
I had a nice dinner this Easter, and I have a comfortable home, as well. I’m not starving, I’m not dying from radiation poisoning, nor do I have a child suffering birth defects from exposure to toxic wastes.
These people have needed help for a very long time. Insult to injury-we’ve dumped toxic waste in their waters and stolen their food supply, as well.
How about a fair trial, instead?
I don’t know about you, but as an American citizen I’m tired of killing people of color in other countries-and seeing them killed, as well.
I don’t trust the Mainstream Media’s version of anything anymore-and I’m tired of my government telling me, “We’re in the right. We have the moral highground.” Now, words like that make me suspicious.
That’s all I heard for eight long years under the old Bush White House. You don’t mind if I just request some actual justice-along with a sense of fair play do you? Is that too much to ask?
How about providing a fair trial for the pirates who have committed crimes while taking steps to stop the terrible abuses, and solve the socio-political and humanitarian catastrophe that fuels the pirate activity?
The captured prisoner is entitled to a fair trial. We’ve had international laws regarding piracy for at least 250 years. He won’t be classified as an enemy combatant and is not a terrorist as some want to consider these pirates.
Good point about the terrorist thing. I have heard so many Americans, including those whose jobs it should be to know better, trying to make this a Muslim terrorism thing.
Just how many of their hostages have these so-called “violent” pirates killed to date?
One? One hostage was killed during a rescue – not sure that was done by the pirates tho’.
Any others? Could it be that these “pirates” aren’t really all that violent?
No.
link
So, let’s review – two of the pirates were below decks & “stuck their heads out” of a hatch. The third one was on deck with his AK pointed straight at Phillips’ back (this is the same Phillips who jumped overboard & tried to swim for it before). This risk to Phillips’ life was the trigger for the shooting.
That’s a stirring account – I’m not sure that I believe it though.
Nevertheless, I do agree with the earlier commenter who said something along the lines of “when you go a-pirating, you put your life on the line.”
Now I hear that the pirate that they have in custody may be 16 years old. I wonder if all of them were around that age.
Maybe it’s a bit soon to be strutting around with our chests all puffed out about how we “took out” the big, bad pirates.
I’m amazed that the US Media is enjoying complete credibility here. This is the same media that spent eight years lying to us, covering up, cherry-picking, editing, and photoshopping, isn’t it?
The American media was absolutely complicit in the run-up to the Iraq War, wasn’t it? And we all know-along with the rest of the world-what happened there.
How many dead-how many destroyed lives-how much bloodshed have their big mouths and their stunning submisiveness cost the United States?
Most of the US media is owned by one man, isn’t it? And that same man-Rupert Murdoch-owns media conglomerates in other countries as well, doesn’t he?
In total honesty, I’m very skeptical of anything I hear from the White House. Granted Obama is the “new guy,” but didn’t we just spend eight years with the “old guy,” a man who lied to us with every breath he drew-and the American press backed him up 100%?
Credibilty-like respect-is earned. It’s not a “given.” And after the horific debacle in Iraq-I’ve learned to be a lot more discriminating and a lot more skeptical about the things I am told.
And as long a we’re on the subject, the US Navy says the ship’s hold was filed with food-stuffs. Was it? No one may ever know the real answer to that. We only know what we’ve been told-and our information is only as good as it’s source. People need to do their own thinking.
Has the Bush White House taught us nothing? I prefer to do my own fact-finding, my own digging, and my own verifying. Nasty habit I’ve picked up from the Bush years.
All these calls for putting these people on trial on Monday-then hanging them on Tuesday are unAmerican. These calls to execute them-and do it quickly-are just as unAmerican, in my book. I hope it’s not because of skin color-and nation of origin.
America’s been plauged with gun violence lately. But I don’t don’t hear very many calls for anyone’s head, regarding any of this. The intenet is “on fire” regarding these pirates. Fascinating.
We have a tendency to worship our military. Being supportive is approriate. Blind allegiance is not.
If I recall correctly-there was quite a call for violence during the build-up to the Iraq War too, wasn’t there? People couldn’t wait to go to Iraq to really “kick some ass.” Now heads are hanging in grief and shame. As a country, we may never recover. We need to step back, and look at the “big picture.”
Remember how thilled we all were with “Shock and Awe?” We’re not thrilled with it anymore, are we? I’m just wondering if we have all the information that’s needed, here. I’ve learned to be suspicious.
Not being suspicious is how we ended up with ghost detainees, extraordinary rendition, black sites, and US citizens facing possible prosecutions for War Crimes-Crimes Against Humaity. That’s quite the appetite for gullibility, isn’t it?
Why do we always need to kick somebody’s ass? Why are those asses always brown-skinned and in another country?
There’s been a rash of violent shootings in the US recently, hasn’t there? I’m not hearing any bloodlust for any of these criminals. I’m hearing understanding, sympathy and compassion.
I’m hearing the tumbling economy, and a highly “stressed out” people being blamed for all this violence on our home-soil-perpetrated by our fellow countrymen-against our fellow countrymen.
Do you just suppose maybe the “economy” in Somalia may have had something to do with these acts of piracy? The global economy has been tumbling for a long time. Somalia’s been in serious trouble for years. In many ways.
The western democracies do not have “clean hands,” here. What a surprise that is, eh?
Because the US media enjoys blowing smoke up our collective asses about how wonderful we are-as usual we are the last to know. Comes as no real “surprise.” Especially, after the past eight years.
The calls for the immediate execution of these people are damned unAmerican, in my book. Isn’t talk like this how we got into trouble in Iraq to begin with? Isn’t that how places like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air force Base happened?
In the country where I was raised, no matter what you stand accused of, you’re entitled to your day in court-and a fair trial, as well.
Eight years under the Bush White House seems to have given us a real bloodlust-in this country-but mostly just for “other countries.”
We’re “all teeth”-right off the bat. That’s how the Iraq War started, isn’t it? We need to cool off. We need some perspective here.
Regarding this particular incident of piracy, the hostage was rescued unharmed, wasn’t he? The pirates need to charged and prosecuted. They require a fair trial, don’t they?
I hear even monsters like John Yoo will get a fair trial. As it should be.
So let’s not go overboard like we did with Iraq-insiting people get “strung-up” right away.
Careless words like this have gotten us into serious trouble once already, haven’t they? People tend to “psyche each other up.” Maybe not the best idea when you’re a powerful nation dealing with a third world country.
“Psyching each other up” has caused tremendous loss of life, and horrific pain and suffering. Not to mention the US military with sky-high suicide rates. All this macho, posturing, tough-guy bullshit has proven very costly, hasn’t it? Just asking for some real “pespective,” here.
Aren’t all criminals entitled to their day in court? Isn’t that how we do business in America? So many calls for violence. We truly need to cool off, here.
If the media in the US is to be believed-one of the pirates is sixteen years old.
Should we just “string him up,” and tell the international community to go to hell, like we did in Iraq? Not this American-not by a long shot.
The Bush years were very costly years for my country, in more ways than one.
I love my country, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sit back and allow the same violent rhetoric that brought about the Iraq War to flourish again-and go unchallenged.
Some of these comments are just as irresponsible as what comes out of the mouth of Glenn Beck and others just like him. We need to calm down.