Pathetic anti-piracy!

[Shroom Man 777]

It would be an atrocity.

[Stark]

Thanas, I think you're missing the whole macho chestbeating point. This whole piracy issue has been a magnet for outraged bloodthirst from day one, in a way I don't really understand. It's almost as if it personally galls these internet tough guys that things like reality get in the way of their primitive gut reactions.

[Alphawolf55]

Thanas, I think you're missing the whole macho chestbeating point. This whole piracy issue has been a magnet for outraged bloodthirst from day one, in a way I don't really understand. It's almost as if it personally galls these internet tough guys that things like reality get in the way of their primitive gut reactions.

Can you really blame them for being angry that these people steal millions of dollars and no one wants to do anything about it? I mean people forget that often times these guys are merely desperate men looking to eat and collective society shat on them to make this needed but still.

[Losonti Tokash]

Thanas, I think you're missing the whole macho chestbeating point. This whole piracy issue has been a magnet for outraged bloodthirst from day one, in a way I don't really understand. It's almost as if it personally galls these internet tough guys that things like reality get in the way of their primitive gut reactions.

Can you really blame them for being angry that these people steal millions of dollars and no one wants to do anything about it? I mean people forget that often times these guys are merely desperate men looking to eat and collective society shat on them to make this needed but still.

No, I don't think you'll find much sympathy for a bunch of anonymous losers on the internet cheering for the murder of defenseless prisoners.

[Thanas]

^Indeed.

Heck, my brother is in the merchant marine. He is at risk from capture of pirates. Yet you won't find him nor me cheering for the murder of defenseless prisoners either. Fighting back when attacked - one thing. Not taking captured pirates to court - another.

So all this "Get the Russians in. They know how to murder people the right way" is nothing but internet tough guys who have no stake in this, but somehow feel they can make +1 posts which amount to little more than "HURR DURR".

Disgusting.

[Thanas]

Perhaps someone should dust off the old "Pirate Cruise" idea... http://www.somalicruises.com/

Yes, let us get a bunch of rich guys with no training whatsoever in distinguishing pirates from unarmed fishermen cruise around the coast, loaded to the teeth with booze and automatic weapons. What could possibly go wrong?

[Aaron]

Now Thanas, how can we get our daily dose of dead brown folk foreigners if we don't abuse prisoners and shoot innocents by accident?

More seriously, unless the West actually wants to do something about this, either via a military option or the more practical (in the long run) option of actually solving the problems in the local area then this is going to continue. I'll be the first to admit that my first instinct is to go through with a military force and clean everyone out but as long as these guys aren't physically hurting anyone I can't much support that.

[Thanas]

The real problem is that the west is pretty much powerless when it comes to stopping the problems in the local area. We cannot make airtight and continous patrols in those waters to stop illegal asian and arab trawling, which is the root cause of the problem. We do not have the ships or the money (I guess one way would be to pay the pirates to control their own waters, but this would be guaranteed to be ineffective due to corruption and incompetence of the pirates).

So the solution is either to destroy a whole bunch of coastal villages the 19th century way and utterly ruin the last livelihood of the few fishermen left in doing so or continue as we currently do and hope the situation resolves itself.

Or go in with a full style invasion, committ to another decade or so of guerilla fighting and pour enormous amounts of resources in trying to fix the country. A non-option considering our absolutely stellar record in Afghanistan and Iraq so far.

[Shroom Man 777]

But at least with an invasion, I don't think the tough guys here would be bleating about doing stupid horrible shit to captives and prisoners and instead we'd have guys like me shrieking about war crimes and atrocities and America fuck no and shit.

[LaCroix]

If you would shriek about people getting into Somalia and trying to break up the warlord regime and restore order after decades of civil war, then your radar is more than a bit off.

Hell, I would donate to a military intervention in Somalia!

[[R_H]]

If you would shriek about people getting into Somalia and trying to break up the warlord regime and restore order after decades of civil war, then your radar is more than a bit off.

Hell, I would donate to a military intervention in Somalia!

More nationbuilding? After all, Iraq and Afghanistan went and are going so well. Plus it would be up to America (again, like usual) to do the heavy lifting so to speak.

[LaCroix]

If you would shriek about people getting into Somalia and trying to break up the warlord regime and restore order after decades of civil war, then your radar is more than a bit off.

Hell, I would donate to a military intervention in Somalia!

More nationbuilding? After all, Iraq and Afghanistan went and are going so well. Plus it would be up to America (again, like usual) to do the heavy lifting so to speak.

First, the nationbuilding in Afghanistan went rather well until Bush decided to concentrate on his pet project of attacking a more or less stable country (Irak), MAKING it a terrorist shithole. If that didn't happen and the nations would have continued working together in Afghanistan, that place would have been cleaned up long ago.

Somalia is already a huge shithole, so there is no way you can make the situation there any worse, as long as you don't shep-solution it.

[Thanas]

And there is no way the political power and will is still there, after over a decade in Afghanistan, to go into another hole. The military part is not the problem (if one disregards the US Army being pretty much tired now), maybe not even the resource part, but the political part is the problem.

[LaCroix]

That's why I didn't promote it, but rather said I'd support it if it would happen sometime.

[[R_H]]

Isn't Afghanistan's government, well pathetically weak to put it bluntly? As in they basically just control Kabul and the surrounding countryside, and tribes and warlords control the rest.

How would Somalia be any different, it is after all a tribal/clan based society as well? Not to mention the presence of the Islamic Court Union, al Shabab and the various other factions.

[Sarevok]

Isn't Afghanistan's government, well pathetically weak to put it bluntly? As in they basically just control Kabul and the surrounding countryside, and tribes and warlords control the rest.

How would Somalia be any different, it is after all a tribal/clan based society as well? Not to mention the presence of the Islamic Court Union, al Shabab and the various other factions.

What would be goal of intervention here ? Improving the quality of life in Somalia ? Under the fucked up rules the world operates under that is all but impossible. At same the same bizarre sense of morality that pervades international politics makes it trivial to deal with pirates by just invading the country under a faux excuse and killing people. But the strength of will to occupy and improve a country Somalia for the good of people living there is all but impossible to findl.

[xerex]

ummmmm ok then.

Ten suspected Somali pirates captured by the Russian navy last week may have perished after their release, a defence source in Moscow has told reporters...........

.........They were released in an inflatable boat without navigational equipment.

Within an hour, contact was lost with the boat's radio beacon, the defence source said.

"It seems that they all died," the unnamed source was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8675978.stm

[Norade]

The release of prisoners in such a way does seem fishy, but if they dropped them off around the same coordinates where they found them in a similarly shitty boat to the one they were picked up in I don't see how the Russians did any wrong. They simply put them back where they found them. There's never going to be any proof that they were made to die so the story will fade away in no time.

[Kanastrous]

I have to admit that I'd be much more comfortable with the Russians having just killed all the pirates when storming the ship, than dropping them off in a small boat to die/starve/drown on the open ocean. Aren't you in principle responsible for someone once you have brought them aboard your own vessel...?

Maybe the distinction is only apparent to me...

[Shroom Man 777]

That's hilarious. I mean, that's ridiculous. They capture these guys, send them to Moscow, and then release them - much to everyone's consternation - and now they're suddenly ambiguously "probably dead" after being ditched in the middle of the ocean? That's horrible! Jesus, that just sucks. Those Russians are assholes! Stas Bush!

[Siege]

It's absolutely horrible, but somehow so... Russian that I can't help but laugh about this. It's like they provided them with rations full of Polonium or something. And that declaration... "It seems that they all died." Can you even get more understated and businesslike about the deaths of human beings?

[Night_stalker]

Maybe the old Q-ship dea could be used. Nothing says hello like a squad of SEALS waiting with their friends, Mr. Heckler and Mr. Koch.

[Stark]

Sounds like a great use of resources to me! Let's put units of highly trained hostage rescue guys on civilian ships for months! What this has to do with Q-ships is beyond me; it'd be funny to see a pirate Q-ship sink a naval ship in a moment of stupidity, though.

[Night_stalker]

Well, it's better than using naval vessels only drive away the pirates, plus we can use some Marines if need be. I was using the SEALs as a generic SOCOM unit for reference purposes.

[Losonti Tokash]

The release of prisoners in such a way does seem fishy, but if they dropped them off around the same coordinates where they found them in a similarly shitty boat to the one they were picked up in I don't see how the Russians did any wrong. They simply put them back where they found them. There's never going to be any proof that they were made to die so the story will fade away in no time.

Are you familiar with the concept of negligent homicide?