April 13th, 2009 | 
On yesterdays This Week with George Stephanopoulos ADM Allen (USCG Commandant) was a guest on discussion of the ongoing piracy threat off the coast of Africa and the likes. The discussion centered around the U.S. hostage, at the time, Captain Richard Phillips from the vessel Maersk Alabama who was being held for a ransom of $2 million. However, as of late yesterday afternoon he was in the custody of the U.S. Navy leaving thee hostage takers/pirates dead and one captured. Go Navy! The interview (video here) of ADM Allen was geared towards “what is the U.S. going to do about this?” Near the end of the interview Stephonopolos stated/asked a great question-
…meanwhile, the owners of these ships have — seem to be taking completely different approach over the last year, paying more than $40 million in ransom. They seem to have accepted this as a cost of doing business and they’d rather pay it than confront the pirates.
And short of having hired security on these vessels, this does indeed seem the norm. ADM Allen’s answer was the to take the legal road if viable, which on all accounts one should agree with. However, there also needs to be more drastic measures taken to protect not only U.S. general/cargo vessels transiting high piracy areas, but to sway those from doing this to any nations vessel. My solution? Well, I don’t have one.
With that being said, we could continue to flex our muscles as we did yesterday by using our Special Ops community to secure the area on a case by case basis. Oh, you didn’t hear? From Reuters-
U.S. Navy special forces shot dead three Somali pirates on a lifeboat off Somalia and freed American cargo ship captain…Navy SEALs, elite special operations troops, on the USS Bainbridge shot dead the pirates in the lifeboat after the Bainbridge’s captain determined that Phillips’ life was in imminent danger because a pirate pointed an AK-47 rifle at him.
Message sent and received. But wait, where does this leave our fellow sailors who will be transiting the area in the future? At first thought I was thinking this to be a great show of force, however, in the same article above it’s noted-
Somali pirates have generally not harmed their hostages and officials fear they could now act more violently.
So far as these companies are giving into the ransom of their crews they’re not going to make any progress- this is a bad practice and obviously easy money for the organizers of the pirates. The money spent on ransom thus far is less than what would be spent on private security firms I’m sure, but doing this is sending the wrong message to your crews and the pirates alike. Just an opinion I guess.
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