Opinion
Pirates don’t deserve equality
April 30, 2009
In the past two weeks pirates have dominated the maritime news; yes, pirates! The Somali pirates have been causing havoc on the seas. They have hijacked several U.S. ships in the last few weeks. So what’s the real solution? Is it to invade, bomb, use diplomacy or send troops to the pirates land bases in Somalia?
The solution could involve a few of those possibilities. The U.S. has the power to use force against the pirates and therefore to protect our men and women at sea we must do so.
With the threat of pirates being real and dangerous we must design a policy that empowers the people at sea. Empowering the crew on each ship with weapons, so that if attacked they can protect themselves and defend the ship.
Invading without the help of other nations would not behoove the U.S.Ñremember we don’t need another Iraq “go it alone” fling.
This country has seen too many lives lost that way; we don’t need to lose any more. Without support from another country in the process of invading I don’t think that it is a good idea. The world community is, however, being affected by this problem.
The U.S. is not the only country that will suffer a loss from these ship attacks. The pirate attacks affect international shipping, which in turn affect all of the countries that do business with the U.S. overseas to some extent.
With the world community behind us, sending troops may not be a bad idea, however that’s once again with the world community supporting us and other countries willing to send troops in as well.
Sending in troops would only prove to be difficult. This idea would involve sending troops into a dangerous area and trying to kill the pirates on land. Once again, in theory this idea doesn’t sound bad, but it is. The U.S. has already continued to send more troops to Afghanistan and still has a lot of troops in Iraq. We don’t need to have a lot of troops in Somalia.
Bombing the pirate land bases was an option that came up recently and many experts have had their say on the matter, now it’s my turn. Bombing the land bases isn’t a bad idea in theory. It would destroy their weapons that they have so many of, it would kill some of them, which the U.S. has already done and hopefully it can destroy some of their other resources that are kept at their land bases. As mentioned earlier, I think at this point we can throw the idea of diplomacy out the window. They’re trying to kill us, so we shouldn’t bother negotiating with them.
In the end, the answer is either bombing or invading the Somali pirate land bases, equipping our ships with weapons so that we can protect them ourselves and having the world community behind us. Without the world behind us, the U.S. risks hurting its relations with foreign leaders, something that cannot, and should not be risked.
Gary Klaput is a student at UW-River Falls.