One Brick Short

OK, this who pirate thing is getting silly. First, a bunch of punks with second-hand armaments in high-powered bass boats are screwing up the shipping lanes, taking hostages and making a pretty good living for themselves.

Then they attack rich people on cruise ships. Then they grab a ship full of tanks and weapons on the way to, well, uh, gee, no one really seems to know. Then, with the brown-market arms trade in jeopardy and rich people in jeopardy, the international community gets up and gets going.

In the latest effort to thwart piracy, a French warship refused to surrender to ragamuffins in skiffs and broke up an attack by Somali pirates on a cargo ship in the dangerous Gulf of Aden, according to the Associated Press.
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The warship was patrolling the area Thursday as part of a multinational operation to protect commercial vessels passing through one of the world’s most important sea routes. The crew of the French “PM L’Her” dispatch boat intercepted two speedboats carrying eight Somali pirates as they were preparing to board a Panamanian cargo ship, the AP said.

That’s good. That’s a good start. More than a dozen warships from now patrol the waters between Yemen and Somalia, ships from Britain, India, Iran, the United States, China, France and Germany. A Malaysian military chopper even broke up an attack on an Indian tanker.
Unfortunately, on Thursday Somali pirates did seize an Egyptian cargo ship and its 28 crew members, the AP reported.

Pirates attacked 111 times in the Gulf of Aden in 2008, successfully hijacking 42 ships, according to an international organization that counts those things. If they were Pittsburgh Pirates, that would be a .378 batting average, definitely Hall of Fame material. So how do you convince pirates to stop pirating?

The last time the world was faced was pirates, the world simply killed anyone caught pirating. Walk the plank, keel haul or shoot-on-sight would all, perhaps, help convince pirates to find new occupations, or at least new prey. On the other hand, people with jobs seldom attack ships so maybe the world needs to help Somalia and other countries bolster their economies. Perhaps the world can afford to do that after they’ve bolstered their own.

Meanwhile, what’s happened to the Somali pirates the French caught? They will be turned over to Somali authorities.