The Weak Link in Anti-Piracy Efforts

From New Wars:

Last week a USN helicopter was fired on by a Somali pirate from a Taiwanese freighter. They just keep getting bolder, and getting away with it, according to JE Dyer at Commentary Magazine:

There was no decision point for returning fire from the Navy helicopter, because the crewmen were not certain they had been fired on until they evaluated the recording from their infrared camera after the mission. The pirates used small arms (rifles), which give off little muzzle flash and do not have the range to hit the helicopter at the altitude it would maintain for a surveillance mission. A shoulder-fired missile would be immediately detectable and draw an immediate response from the Navy. But small-arms fire, in these circumstances, is not a valid pretext for any specific critique of either our operational policies or our military rules of engagement.

Read more ....

My Comment: When 9/11 occurred, I called my brother in San Francisco to tell him what had happened. It was 6:30 AM his time, 9:30 AM my time. He was half asleep when he picked up the phone ... but he woke up immediately when the first thing that I told him was that the U.S. was now at war.

I expected worse.

10 days later I was in New York City to bring back home an ex-girlfriend who was completely shaken by that event. She was a few blocks away when the second plane hit .... and a few blocks further when the first tower fell down.

She now lives in Northern Quebec .... cities scare her.

Seeing the despair in New York City made me expect a war .... a war that would involve the largest mobilization of people since the Second World War. I expected the governments of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan .... and many others gone or overthrown within two or three years.

I expected a new world.

I was wrong.

What we now have is a return to an older world of continuous war, conflict, tribal and religious hatreds .... and I do not see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We have lost our will to fight evil and the monsters that it produces. As a result, the conflicts get bigger and the costs rise.

The everyday conflict with Somali pirates is a symbol to me of what is wrong.

The USA has a trillion dollar navy, with an aircraft carrier having more firepower than what was used in the Second World War. But a few poor pirates with rusty AK-47s and RPGs have the will to stand up to the U.S. Navy and .... win.

We have made war distant and clean .... but while we believe that far away conflicts do not affect us directly, the truth is that if we do not confront it now, it eventually will.