{"id":4187,"date":"2009-04-13T06:41:28","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T13:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/?p=4187"},"modified":"2009-06-03T09:14:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T16:14:12","slug":"obama-and-the-politics-of-piracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/archives\/4187","title":{"rendered":"Piracy Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

N<\/span>ow that the drama of the Somali pirates is passed\u2014for the moment, anyway\u2014it seems worth commenting on an op-ed piece about the incident that appeared in the Sunday, April 12, 2009 edition of The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

By midday of that day the American merchantman Maersk Alabama<\/em> was safe in Mombassa, Kenya. Captain Richard Phillips, who’d been held for five days in a 28-foot lifeboat, had been freed.\u00a0 Three of the four pirates who’d held him captive had been slain\u2014three shots, three kills\u2014by American sniper fire from the destroyer U.S.S. Bainbridge.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Times <\/em>piece started out by pointing out that American citizens being held hostage by pirates is nothing new, alluding to the American wars against the Barbary pirates of North Africa at the turn of the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 It quickly became vague and diffuse, dwelling on no single incident and offering very few specifics about that interlude, save for a brief reference to the destroyer’s namesake, Captain William Bainbridge, who was himself taken by pirates in 1804 when his command, the frigate U.S.S. Philadelphia<\/em>, grounded on an uncharted reef off the shores of Tripoli and was rendered defenseless.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Times<\/em> piece dwelt at some length on the loss of nineteen American soldiers in the Battle of Mogadishu on October 3-4, 1993, an incident dramatized in the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down<\/em>.\u00a0 There, the Americans had been supporting a United Nations initiative to end yet another in a long series of civil wars in Somalia.\u00a0 After Somali militia had killed and reportedly mutilated twenty-four Pakistani peacekeepers, the UN Security Council authorized the arrest of those responsible.\u00a0 A small American force went into Mogadishu to capture the Somali foreign minister and his political adviser and remove them by truck.<\/p>\n

We had underestimated the enemy capacity for resistance. The Somali militia were, after all, irregulars, semi-trained guys in colored T-shirts and flip-flops, and no one took them seriously despite their AK-47s,\u00a0 rocket-propelled grenades, and proven capacity for urban warfare, let alone that we were on their turf in their country.<\/p>\n

The mission went south very quickly.\u00a0 The Somalis barricaded the streets with jalopies and piles of burning tires and shot down two American helicopters.\u00a0 Thus a one-hour operation became a fifteen hour battle, ending only when a column of American, Malaysian, and Pakistani troops, tanks, and armored personnel carriers fought into the city and evacuated the mission.<\/p>\n

The bodies of several dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets by Somali mobs.\u00a0 This was bad for American domestic consumption, and so on this basis alone the Clinton administration stopped all American actions against the Somali militia, withdrew all troops within six months, and thereafter avoided the use of boots on the ground to support its foreign policy.<\/p>\n

In focusing on a single mismanaged mission kept alive in public memory by a Hollywood blockbuster, the Times<\/em> editorialists successfully avoided discussing the success of that earlier mission against the North African pirates, long before air support, radio, or steam power.<\/p>\n

Captain Bainbridge’s ship had been swarmed by Tripolitanian gunboats and compelled to surrender.\u00a0 Once Philadelphia<\/em> had been refloated and brought into Tripoli, the pirates seem to have found the ship\u2014a late 18th<\/sup> century square rigger\u2014a little sophisticated for them.\u00a0 Nonetheless, her mere existence was a potential threat to Western shipping.\u00a0 After all, the Tripolitanians might eventually figure out how to sail and fight her.<\/p>\n

The commander of the American squadron in the Mediterranean, Commodore Edward Preble, was an old Revolutionary who apparently understood that threatened or actual violence is as integral to effective foreign policy as negotiation.\u00a0 He chose to eliminate the threat posed by the captured man-of-war by destroying her.<\/p>\n

He ordered a mission that would involve sailing into a heavily-fortified enemy harbor, boarding and burning a warship held by pirates, and then, God willing, returning home.\u00a0 Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, just twenty-five years old, was appointed to lead the operation.\u00a0 He was given the Mastico<\/em>, a filthy captured Tripolitanian ketch (a tiny two-masted sailing craft), which was renamed U.S.S. Intrepid<\/em> (the first of four American warships that have borne that name).<\/p>\n

His crew was taken from the schooner U.S.S. Enterprise<\/em> and Preble’s flagship, U.S.S. Constitution<\/em>.\u00a0 With a Maltese pilot who knew the harbor at Tripoli, Decatur sailed from the Sicilian port of Syracuse on February 3, 1804.\u00a0 Storms delayed him en route, and he did not reach Tripoli until late afternoon on February 16.\u00a0 Intrepid<\/em> was disguised as a Maltese trading vessel under British colors, the United Kingdom having maintained good relations with the pirates by paying them tribute, which we might today call protection money.<\/p>\n

Around 7:00 pm, navigating by moonlight, Decatur sailed into the harbor and, claiming to have lost his anchors, requested and received permission to tie up alongside Philadelphia<\/em>.\u00a0 As Intrepid<\/em> came alongside, with some of her crew tossing lines to the frigate, Decatur and the others were huddled along the bulwarks, ready for action.\u00a0 A guard aboard Philadelphia<\/em> saw something and shouted, \u201cAmerikanos!\u201d\u00a0 Decatur gave the order to board and, cutlass in hand, led sixty men up the frigate’s side.\u00a0 The pirates, caught by surprise, did not resist; most dove overboard and swam for shore.\u00a0 Within twenty minutes, Philadelphia<\/em> was ablaze.\u00a0 Decatur got his men back to Intrepid<\/em>, which, pursued by the fire of 141 guns, escaped the harbor.\u00a0 None of his men were killed; one was injured; Philadelphia<\/em> burned to the waterline and sank.<\/p>\n

Commodore Preble then blockaded the Barbary ports, bombarded their cities, and sank their ships.\u00a0 His successor, Samuel Barron, sent the Marines ashore. \u00a0They captured the city of Derne and defeated the Tripolitanian armies in two land battles. (The Marines commemorate this victory in the line in the Marines’ Hymn, \u201c…to the shores of Tripoli,\u201d and their officers’ dress swords, which are patterned after one given to a Marine lieutenant by an Ottoman prince to honor the American’s valor at Derne). In 1805, the treaty of peace between the United States and Tripoli, Tunisia and Algeria, “negotiated at the cannon’s mouth,” was signed aboard U.S.S. Constitution<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson called the Intrepid<\/em> mission “the most bold and daring act of the age.”\u00a0 Perhaps it exemplifies what American audacity and imagination could do when Washington was three months away by sail and an officer had to improvise the execution of his mission on the spot.<\/p>\n

Why does the American use of force to suppress pirates \u2013 seagoing extortionists, after all \u2013 seem to so frighten the Times? One can only speculate. Perhaps there is something virile in controlled violence that makes the editors nervous.<\/p>\n

Most peoples get the governments they deserve.\u00a0 Somalia has nearly no government at all, numberless private armies, police forces, and religious militias, one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates, and little public access to potable water.<\/p>\n

Some free market types argue that Somalia is nearly a libertarian paradise, with a highly efficient and competitive service sector (including crystal clear cell phones, privately-owned, managed, and policed airports, and electric power service in most major cities), and a completely free press.\u00a0 That seems irrelevant in a country where two-thirds of the population doesn’t live in cities and nearly two-thirds of the adults can’t read.<\/p>\n

The so-called Transitional Federal Government, which occupies Baidoa, the country’s third largest city, is recognized by some foreign powers as the government of Somalia.\u00a0 Its authority nominally extends over the country.\u00a0 Its effective power doesn’t quite make it past the Baidoa city line and its attempts to move into Mogadishu, the national capital, have not yet succeeded.\u00a0 The TFG hasn’t yet been able to collect taxes or establish any stable revenue and is entirely dependent upon foreign aid.\u00a0 Outside Baidoa, Somalia is effectively divided into numerous petty states, ruled by clan-based warlords, local chieftains, and Islamists, a condition akin to that prevailing before its colonization by Italy during the late 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 One might say that Somalia, after enjoying the benefits of Western civilization for nearly a century, has simply returned to its former condition.<\/p>\n

Now, in the last two years, by turning to piracy, many Somalis have unwittingly exported their violent culture into the mainstream of commerce.\u00a0 Perhaps they haven’t understood that, once they began preying on Americans, they encountered another culture\u2014of instant news, the sound bite, the blog, and the politicians who live in it.\u00a0 The result has not been pretty.<\/p>\n

Since Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, piracy has been eradicated only by force: the ordered use of violence to eliminate the threat of armed robbers to peaceful commerce. The Americans have shown they are still willing to use it. <\/p>\n

If the Somalis understood our history, they would realize that the United States has always been ready to use violence to suppress pirates, bandits, and others who prey upon businessmen going about their business.<\/p>\n

In 1913, after the Titanic <\/em>disaster, the nations of the trading world established the International Ice Patrol to monitor icebergs and report their presence in the sea lanes.\u00a0 The Patrol is conducted by the United States Coast Guard: its costs are apportioned among the nations whose ships travel the North Atlantic.\u00a0 Perhaps the trading nations should give similar treatment to the suppression of Somali piracy, as a cost of maintaining the seas as a medium of commerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N<\/span>ow that the drama of the Somali pirates is passed\u2014for the moment, anyway\u2014it seems worth commenting on an op-ed piece about the incident that appeared in the Sunday, April 12, 2009 edition of The New York Times.<\/p>\n

By midday of that day the American merchantman Maersk Alabama was safe in Mombassa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[176,175,177,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4187"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5215,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4187\/revisions\/5215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}