You know the president is seen as weak when...

redrumloa

redrumloa

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Pirates take american hostages at sea for the first time in over 200 years.

The crew of a U.S.-flag ship seized by pirates off Somalia has retaken the vessel, American officials said Wednesday, even as a shaken national security establishment faced troubling questions about the hostage-taking at high sea.

Capt. Joseph Murphy, an instructor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told The Associated Press the Department of Defense that his son Shane, the second in command on the ship, had called him to say the crew had regained control.

The ship, captured by pirates near the coast of Somalia, apparently was the first such hostage-taking involving U.S. citizens in 200 years.

"The crew is back in control of the ship," a U.S. official said at midday, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record. "It's reported that one pirate is on board under crew control — the other three were trying to flee," the official said. The status of the other pirates was unknown, the official said, but they were reported to "be in the water."
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redrumloa said:
Pirates take american hostages at sea for the first time in over 200 years.
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'T aint the President - it's the country.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
'T aint the President - it's the country.
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Agreed to a point, politicians in general have worked hard at destroying the USA bringing us to the weakened status we are in.

You gotta admit though, a US president smoozing with Iran, Cuba and North Korea etc will be seen as a major weakness to be exploited.
 
And there's me wondering why Somalian language(s) courses aren't popular yet considering the next talk-like-a-pirate day.
 
redrumloa said:
You gotta admit though, a US president smoozing with Iran, Cuba and North Korea etc will be seen as a major weakness to be exploited.
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Me sings false with Michael Jackson: "You are not alone"
 
I don't agree.
These pirates are opportunists and the idea that they would pass on a chance to hijack a vessel just because it's country of origin is supposedly seen as 'strong', strikes me as risible.
 
I'm with Robert, I don't see this is a sign of US weakness. Losing Vietnam was a sign of weakness. Allowing the Taliban to retake Afghanistan is a sign of weakness. Losing all your major banks and triggering a world recession is a sign of weakness. But having a US flagged ship attacked by pirates in pirate infested waters where ships from all other nations have been similarly attacked is hardly a sign of US weakness.
 
I agree with Robert too - these pirates don't care where the ships are from.

I wonder how long before a hapless destroyer sleeping on the job gets held up.
 
redrumloa said:
You know the president is seen as weak when Pirates take american hostages at sea for the first time in over 200 years.
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Isnt is the job of the nation to protect their own waters? Somalia has been failing greatly at this for a long time. I suppose if the USA owned Somalia then perhaps this might be seen as weak.

IMO, the pirates were taking ships. The Americans were driving in an area well known for pirate attacks. The odds say it's bound to happen at some point.

Solution -- stock American ships with Ninjas.
 
faethor said:
redrumloa said:
You know the president is seen as weak when Pirates take american hostages at sea for the first time in over 200 years.
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Isnt is the job of the nation to protect their own waters?
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They are protecting their waters ... from foreign merchant vessels who don't pay the appropriate tolls. One mans pirate is another mans privateer.
 
redrumloa said:
Pirates take american hostages at sea for the first time in over 200 years.
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Sorry that is not the case. The news appears to missed that in 1975, President Ford sent US Marines against Cambodian Khmer Rouge pirates for their seizure of the USS Mayaguez, a merchant ship.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
faethor said:
redrumloa said:
You know the president is seen as weak when Pirates take american hostages at sea for the first time in over 200 years.
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Isnt is the job of the nation to protect their own waters?
Click to expand...

They are protecting their waters ... from foreign merchant vessels who don't pay the appropriate tolls. One mans pirate is another mans privateer.
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Here's something that speaks to the idea that the pirates act as an ad hoc coast guard.
 
"Protecting their waters" loses all plausibility when they sail out far beyond their waters to seize a foreign ship. This US ship was 645 km East of Mogadishu. I don't think Somalia has waters that extend that far, which means they can't be protecting their waters because the waters are not theirs.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Here's something that speaks to the idea that the pirates act as an ad hoc coast guard.
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An interesting read, thanks, especially this bit:
But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
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Yes, Pirates at one point did serve a useful role. Most of them were in fact just fishermen fighting off foreign fishermen in their local waters. But things kinda spiraled out of control when they started sailing hundreds of kilometers to hijack oil tankers.
 
It's maffia. They don't even serve their country, because that country is shaped by foreign forces.

It's just a symptom of putting countries in the proverbial blender.

Btw. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA would be behind it, in the context of market protectionism. (although the hijacking of oil tankers would deter that theory).

Just spreading some unfunded rumours :twisted:
 
Glaucus said:
"Protecting their waters" loses all plausibility when they sail out far beyond their waters to seize a foreign ship. This US ship was 645 km East of Mogadishu. I don't think Somalia has waters that extend that far, which means they can't be protecting their waters because the waters are not theirs.
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Wait? What kind of boat did the pirates have? How far from shore where they?

If you check a map then you'll see that the eastern most point of Somalia is about 700 km east of Mogadishu. That's up around the Gulf of Aden where most of the piracy happens.
 
Fluffy, I have no reason to believe the Maersk Alabama was anywhere neat the Somali coastline. According to one article I read it was 645km East (not North East, bust just East) of Mogadishu. According to the Wikipedia, it was 440km Southeast from the port city of Eyl. triangulating that you can get a pretty good picture of where it was - hundreds of kilometers from the closest Somali cost line.

And don't be fooled by the little speed boats the hijackers use. They're high tech enough to carry mobile GPS systems so that they know where they are even when they loose sight of the coast. And they use motherships to launch their high speed boats, much like how the Western navies do. And considering that once they seize a ship, they don't need fuel for a return trip, their range is extended greatly. Plus modifying a boat to increase fuel storage isn't exactly rocket science either.
 
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