It’s asinine leftist drivel like that which caused me to shift to the right after 9/11 (and land in the center).
There won’t be any results either.[/quote]
Yeah just like the USA incvasion of Iraq, no tangible results 'cept lots of dead people.
and just so the message is clear…
Yep he wants our military out of Saudi Arabia, the US to stop supporting Israel, and to have a Caliphate of Sunni Muslims stretching from China’s border to the Med again. And after that he can crush those heretical Shi’a Muslims in Iran and Iraq for believing something slightly different than the Wahhabist version of Islam.
Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were also behind other attacks, like the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia (1996), the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam (1998), and the USS Cole bombing (2000).
[quote]
If by results you mean the Germans won’t be violating people’s human rights and exacerbating tensions with other nations, then yes. US foreign policy caused the islamic revolution in Iran, and it caused 9/11.[/quote]
They are pirates, they have no human rights. They aren’t granted any specific rights under any international convention, unlike how the Geneva Convention says that captured opposing forces who are wearing uniforms are POW’s and not spies. They are preying on merchant traffic, and as such should be hung from the yard arm (if such a thing still exists on modern vessels).
As to your other point, if the US Foreign policy caused 9/11 then why did they attack civilian targets like the Twin Towers? I can understand Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacking the USS Cole, a military target. I can also see, by a long long stretch of logic, that the US Embassies are arms of the US government’s foreign policy decisions. Tell me then, what affect on foreign policy did the Twin Towers have? Was it a military target? Was it a US government facility?
I’ll answer that. No, it was a civilian target full of innocent people who were going to work. Those people weren’t government employees, they worked in businesses located in that building. They didn’t control or affect the US foreign policy decisions of Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton or Bush junior. They were innocents. They were chosen to be a high shock value by the terrorist organization that attacked. Those people didn’t cause 9/11 nor did they deserve the ignoble and horrific deaths they endured.
Sleepyhead, I think you need to step back and rethink what it is you are trying to argue. You say to Gao Bohan that the phrase “they hate us for our freedoms” is nonsense. I don’t see what you are trying to argue as you have only spit out talking points with nothing to back your arguments up.
They don’t hate our freedoms, they hate our modern way of life. They hate that we don’t recognize that the value system they hold has any application to the modern, 21st century world. They hate that their children don’t want to grow up to be like them; they want to grow up to own things and have a choice in the government they have. Their daughters want a chance to earn a living. Here is an article on women in Abu Dhabi who got to become flight attendants and some of the problems it caused with their families afterwards.
They hate that none of the modern amenities they use were made in the Middle East; they have been unable to create anything but terrorism with all their petrodollars. They hate seeing how Israel succeeds in creating wealth and a vibrant, prosperous country out of the desert without having petrodollars. They hate seeing that other people are living happy lives while they are stuck without running water and proper sewage facilities. They hate that their governments are repressive entities that deprive them of a future in order to buy another 747 that has a swimming pool inside of it. They hate that the world has passed them by when they use to have a vibrant civilization that created wealth and knowledge.
The day we stop buying their oil is the day the repressive regimes in the Middle East collapse. I hope that day comes soon, and I fear for that day. They have squandered the largest inheritance of natural resources the world has ever seen and will only blame other people for their lack of achievement.
That’s an interesting assumption. Thanks for sharing.
No doubt.
I mean that boarding a pirate ship, capturing the crew and then releasing them onto dry land isn’t going to stop piracy. Amazing, eh?
Lbksig has already addressed this point, but let me ask you a couple of questions.
- How should the US have handled Israel? Never recognized it from the beginning, or recognized it but abandoned it at some future point in time, or what?
- How should the US have handled Saudi Arabia? We were bound to honor our agreement to protect its government, which is why we sent troops to that country in 1991, at the Saudi’s government’s request. But should the US have never made any deals with Saudi Arabia?
If you could shape American foreign policy on those two issues from 1948 onwards, what would you have decided?
[quote=“lbksig”][quote=“Dragonbones”]
Now on topic. This isn’t the first case, as the Dutch vessel caught some pirates …[/quote][/quote]
So the damned Dutch did that? Not the Germans? Shame on those pot-smoking cheese eaters!
EDIT: lbksig said that, not Dragonbones, one day I’ll learn to use the quote function…
Congrats bob_honest, you’ve just failed Quoting 101. 
solly 
Summarily executing pirates if fine by me, but I’m not sure if that’s really going to stop them. Without an effectual government or occupational force to prevent them from ever launching the attacks in the first place, they may consider millions of dollars worth the risk.
I only mention the UN because this is a uniquely international problem with virtually every nation having a stake in the game. The country most skilled at successfully invading and occupying Islamic nations is the US, but I think there’s exactly zero chance we’re going to open up a third front in Somalia.
Of course the only thing the UN is going offer is some predictably neutered response like issuing a “resolution.”
Maybe there is a reason why they invented ‘due process’. Maybe there will come a time when any government can just declare someone a ‘pirate’ and dump their remains overboard. I hope not.
US citizens on US soil are guaranteed due process. Not foreign pirates in foreign waters. If the Somali state were capable of arresting and trying these pirates, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Whom should grant these pirates due process?
US citizens on US soil are guaranteed due process. Not foreign pirates in foreign waters. If the Somali state were capable of arresting and trying these pirates, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Whom should grant these pirates due process?[/quote]
At least declare them ‘enemy combatants’ so you don’t have to worry about Geneva conventions.
[quote=“Dr. McCoy”]
At least declare them ‘enemy combatants’ so you don’t have to worry about Geneva conventions.[/quote]
Sorry to be a nitpicker, but the Geneva convention only applies to land forces. Pirates aren’t covered under it. You don’t need to reclassify them as ‘enemy combatants’ as they already have a classification under International Naval law, that is as a ‘Pirate’.
No, despite some other poster’s wishes, you don’t get to summarily execute them just because you think they are pirates. However when caught in the act of committing piracy, or in control of a pirated vessel (ex: a 1000 foot long cargo vessel full of battle tanks or a Saudi oil tanker) then the act itself is considerable evidence against them. This is where I get hazy though, with regards to how a trial would work. I know you don’t have to give them a full civilian trial, and they wouldn’t be awarded a military tribunal. I think a trial on board the vessel with military lawyers would be considered sufficient under the various international treaties. Then you have the option of executing them for piracy.
All in all Dr. McCoy, I don’t think the two scenarios are similar. It’s not very likely that some innocent fisherman will happen to drift out to an already captured cargo ship full of pirates, with an RPG in his hand that he swears, under oath, was only to be used for fishing and fishing only.
“Pirates of Somalia - the curse of the broken oiltanker”- soon in a movie theather near you.
PS. The Aussies shot a dungie to the bottom of the sea and dropped the pirates back on land.
There is no solution as long as the warlords control Mogadishu - ther is no law.
Send in some mercanaries to do the job !
My 1/169000000 share of the U.S. electorate votes that, as for the U.S., we should condemn the piracy in the strongest terms and then go on about our business, leaving the problem completely alone.
[quote=“lbksig”][quote=“Dr. McCoy”]
At least declare them ‘enemy combatants’ so you don’t have to worry about Geneva conventions.[/quote]
Sorry to be a nitpicker, but the Geneva convention only applies to land forces. Pirates aren’t covered under it. You don’t need to reclassify them as ‘enemy combatants’ as they already have a classification under International Naval law, that is as a ‘Pirate’.
No, despite some other poster’s wishes, you don’t get to summarily execute them just because you think they are pirates. However when caught in the act of committing piracy, or in control of a pirated vessel (ex: a 1000 foot long cargo vessel full of battle tanks or a Saudi oil tanker) then the act itself is considerable evidence against them. This is where I get hazy though, with regards to how a trial would work. I know you don’t have to give them a full civilian trial, and they wouldn’t be awarded a military tribunal. I think a trial on board the vessel with military lawyers would be considered sufficient under the various international treaties. Then you have the option of executing them for piracy.
All in all Dr. McCoy, I don’t think the two scenarios are similar. It’s not very likely that some innocent fisherman will happen to drift out to an already captured cargo ship full of pirates, with an RPG in his hand that he swears, under oath, was only to be used for fishing and fishing only.[/quote]
I just have had enough of the whole ‘fight barbarism with barbarism’ style of the war on pira-terrorism. We used to be better than that.
No, not the baseball playing Pirates of Pittsburgh, the kind that hijack ships and hold people hostage for ransom. In the past 5 years or so, maybe longer, it seems there are more and more of these news stories coming out…pirates attacking ships of all sorts and sizes for whatever they can get out of them.
This latest one I read on CNN kind of cracked me up. The headline and pic says it all.
Suspected pirates attack U.S. ship, lose
[quote]People on a skiff shot at the USS Ashland approximately 330 nautical miles off the coast of Djibouti.
The Ashland shot back, the U.S. Fifth Fleet said. The skiff caught fire and the people abandoned the skiff.[/quote]
FAIL.
Sadly, not all these ‘pirate attacks’ turn out this way and there have been numerous innocent people killed over the years by garbage human beings like this. I’m somewhat amazed in this day and age that this stuff still happens, but the ocean is a mighty big place and I suppose it is hard to keep security as tight as we would expect on land. 
Bringing a thumbtack to a gunfight.
According to Richard Phillips - captain of the merchant vessel Maersk Alabama - these pirates don’t discriminate when it comes to picking targets. They’re looking to hijack anything that moves.
Er, were looking to hijack anything that moves. I’m sure it won’t take too many more incidents like this before they’ll learn.
The linked story is pretty good, btw. Phillips is a plainspoken Yankee merchant seaman who just thought quicker on his feet than all but one of the four pirates who took him hostage (the pirate leader was evidently able to figure out which way the wind was blowing and gave himself up before the shooting broke out). For example, when the pirates took Phillips and left the Alabama, the ship’s crew emerged from a jury-rigged safe room and began to pursue the pirates, who along with Phillips were packed into one of the Alabama lifeboats. So close was this pursuit that the pirates thought the ship’s wake threatened to capsize the lifeboat. The four pirates were frightened and could not understand why the ship’s crew would endanger their captain, Phillips. According to Phillips, he told them, “yeah, they want to sink us because the first mate wants my job” …which made perfect sense to pirates. 
It’s good to see that there are now more job opportunities available to South African and Canadian expats other than teaching kindy in Taiwan.