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Should ships be armed to combat pirates?

Arm the ships?

  • Yes

    Votes: 152 81.3%

  • No

    Votes: 20 10.7%

  • Offer the pirates carrots

    Votes: 15 8.0%
  • Total voters
    187
#181
D Rokk said:
so my tax money should go to fixing a government and country that would probably shoot us in the back after we are done fixing it when i can barely afford to send my son to daycare?
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I'd imagine that there are a lot of people in Africa who would love to have, as a serious concern, whether or not they could afford to send their child to daycare. A child in Somalia has a 11% chance of dying before they get to age 1. Not to pick on you, but problems of affordability are all relative. THat said, I don't see this as a "particular country's issue", its an issue for the ship owners and their crews. They would seem, to me, to be the ones who are primarily responsible for ensuring safe package. Unfortunately the cheapest response to date has been to pay the ransoms. I suppose its debatable whether government interference has made the risks to pirates higher and, therefore, the ransoms.
 
#182
Mark Latimour said:
I'd imagine that there are a lot of people in Africa who would love to have, as a serious concern, whether or not they could afford to send their child to daycare. A child in Somalia has a 11% chance of dying before they get to age 1. Not to pick on you, but problems of affordability are all relative. THat said, I don't see this as a "particular country's issue", its an issue for the ship owners and their crews. They would seem, to me, to be the ones who are primarily responsible for ensuring safe package. Unfortunately the cheapest response to date has been to pay the ransoms. I suppose its debatable whether government interference has made the risks to pirates higher and, therefore, the ransoms.
Click to expand...

you tottally missed my point and i know i'm B!tch!ng about something that will never change. the taxes i pay should be helping me.. sorry if this seems selfish but i get selfish when MY money is involved.

i saw kids dropping out of college because they couldnt afford it while the government payed for kids from other countries to come here and study, payed for room and board while they were here, transportation, tuition, books, etc..

i'm gonna stop now before this turns political
 
#183
D Rokk said:
you tottally missed my point and i know i'm B!tch!ng about something that will never change. the taxes i pay should be helping me.. sorry if this seems selfish but i get selfish when MY money is involved.
Click to expand...

It appears to me that where you are going wrong is mistaking tax money as being your money. Its the government's money. You may be able to influence the government's thinking about how to spend it, but it's their's to spend.

One could well argue that stopping piracy does benefit you. It means that the cost of goods and oil doesn't increase as the cost of transporting them could very well increase if piracy doesn't stop. Surely that's of more direct benefit to you than say, a new school in some part of your country that you are never going to live in.

However I can understand your frustration, and I certainly don't see this is a US issue or the US's problem (at least inasfar as the US is prepared to put up with the increase in the cost of goods and oil that will come from this).
 
#185
Marley's Ghost said:
These people are desperate. Fix Somalia's government and economy and the pirates go away.
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No way. There are too many greedy and lazy people in the world looking for something for nothing.

Somalia could be the richest nation in the world where people wipe their behinds with $100 bills, and you'd still see these mofo's hijacking boats.

-Mike
 
#187
MJ5150 said:
No way. There are too many greedy and lazy people in the world looking for something for nothing.

Somalia could be the richest nation in the world where people wipe their behinds with $100 bills, and you'd still see these mofo's hijacking boats.

-Mike
Click to expand...
If that were true, why arn't we seeing the same piracy problem amoung US citizens or UK citizens or Norwegians, for example? Surely the overall economic condition of a country has some relevance to the liklihood of "rebel" groups acting as pirates without their native government doing anything to stop it. At a guess, i'd say the correlation is that where a country is wealthy, its in all citizens interests to have a stable government and stable governments tend to have stable army's and police forces to maintain that stability.
 
#188
Mark Latimour said:
If that were true, why arn't we seeing the same piracy problem amoung US citizens or UK citizens or Norwegians, for example? Surely the overall economic condition of a country has some relevance to the liklihood of "rebel" groups acting as pirates without their native government doing anything to stop it. At a guess, i'd say the correlation is that where a country is wealthy, its in all citizens interests to have a stable government and stable governments tend to have stable army's and police forces to maintain that stability.
Click to expand...

I agree, but it's also incredibly naive to think we can simply "fix" Somalia's government and economy. Iraq was a stretch, and they're sitting on ****-tons of oil and some well-educated citizens. Somalia's a whole different story. They have nothing. Their culture glorifies war and death. Firefights are practically the national pastime. Nobody is going to walk in and "fix" it.

:scowl:
 
#189
middy said:
I agree, but it's also incredibly naive to think we can simply "fix" Somalia's government and economy. Iraq was a stretch, and they're sitting on ****-tons of oil and some well-educated citizens. Somalia's a whole different story. They have nothing. Their culture glorifies war and death. Firefights are practically the national pastime. Nobody is going to walk in and "fix" it.

:scowl:
Click to expand...
I'm not suggesting that it can be fixed. The UN tried and failed in the 1990s. However, there are only two options:

1. Do nothing and let the situation continue to escalate (both in terms of the lawlessness and the general level of human suffering - Somalia is pretty much in the top 10 of any bad statistic you can think of in terms of a nation);

2. Try and do something.

A child literally starving to death in Somalia is no less tragic simply because its in Somalia.
 
#191
I totally think that there is a workable plan.
Hold them accountable for their actions! When the pirates try to take control of a boat, Blow them out of the water. The rest of them will get the point pretty quick.

Piracy is robbery, taking another persons property, hijacking people for ransom, there is no justification for that!
I don't care what shape their government is in.
 
#193
I got the jist....
you guys are saying that poverty somehow legitimizes taking from others. It doesn't!

I don't care how poor a person is, if they break into my house - I'm shooting at them.

This crap is paramount to a gang, a bunch of thugs, just doing what they do.
Next you guys will be saying that we should "bailout" the crackhead that carjacks a woman stopped at a red light because he's poor and disadvantaged.

There is a moral code of right and wrong - piracy is wrong - and should not be justified! Also, stealing isn't only done by poor people to feed their familys.
 
#194
nortonrider said:
I got the jist....
you guys are saying that poverty somehow legitimizes taking from others. It doesn't!

I don't care how poor a person is, if they break into my house - I'm shooting at them.

This crap is paramount to a gang, a bunch of thugs, just doing what they do.
Next you guys will be saying that we should "bailout" the crackhead that carjacks a woman stopped at a red light because he's poor and disadvantaged.

There is a moral code of right and wrong - piracy is wrong - and should not be justified! Also, stealing isn't only done by poor people to feed their familys.
Click to expand...

No one's siding with the pirates. The point is that poverty is one of the causes of this sort of thing and you can keep killing them, but more will keep on coming. If you want to look at it from a moral standpoint - killing is someone "more right" than piracy? OK, so they committed piracy and they're in the wrong and maybe you feel that killing them is justified, so are we (not just the US) right to just let it go and kill them and not try to fix the problem of poverty that spawns this crap to begin with?
Just a general question to think about, I'm not attacking your stance, nor am I condoning the pirates.

You cant cure cancer with an aspirin.
 
#195
Mark Latimour said:
It appears to me that where you are going wrong is mistaking tax money as being your money. Its the government's money. You may be able to influence the government's thinking about how to spend it, but it's their's to spend.
Click to expand...

i thinks that's fundamentally wrong, even if it describes pretty accuartley what people in government think. the 'government' represents the people of a state and should do what the people tell it to do no matter how stupid it is, and not what it (they, the people in government) wants. you also get government and state mixed up. tax money is the state's property, not the government's just like downing street 10 is not government property. the state is ultimatley owned by it's citizens.

tax money is 'your' money and you decide on election day how you want it to be spent.

your way of seeing things would fit a dictatorship (or understandable if you are in government)
 
#198
My point was that the problem is unfixable by outsiders. We'll have to do our best to protect our ships, using lethal force if necessary.

Nobody is going to walk into Somalia and "fix" the underlying problems.

Back to the original thread; We can't arm the crews and still expect them to be welcome in every harbor. We can patrol the area with a few Navy vessels (maybe we can get Great Britain to help) and make it more dangerous for the pirates, that's about it.
 
#200
The solution will be a two-pronged one.

You must address the issues that create the climate in which piracy is a "viable option", which is the difficult part of things. You cannot just throw money at the problem and hope it goes away, because that will just create a culture of entitlement. You must educate these people, and help them to create some sustainable economy. The first thing that must happen, IMO, is that the warlord culture needs to be removed, with extreme prejudice. That won't be pretty, because these people think that is OK now, after the decades of it being the de facto form of government in that region.

The second issue is to defend the ships. Anything less than a "no tolerance" attitude will fail. Every pirate must fail, every time.

If both can be done, the region can be saved. The question is, who will step in and provide what needs to be provided, and take the negative press for the beginning of part one? No one wants to be seen as the bully that is beating up poorly armed and not well trained "militias" in their "technicals", but that has to happen. Without that, any other effort will fail.
 

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