Diaphanous dichotomies dictate dissension...
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Originally Posted by
carl
The pirates prey...the navies would protect them, something that has been a primary responsibility of navies...
They do and it has not been -- it is an assumed role dictated by Politicians to protect their business interests and friends. It was common usage of Navies in past centuries; nowadays not so much. They're out of practice which is why most aren't doing it well. Add the fact that fewer Politicians today have any interest in matime commerce and there's no iincentive for Navies to do the anti-piracy thing.Try to find it in the mission statement of any navy. It compares to Armies and COIN -- unpleasant ask, expensive and tedious, best avoided...
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...that is also a difference between fighting pirates and going into the other places you mentioned. Fighting pirates is continuing a social contract that has been in effect for thousands of years. It is also a lot easier to do since it is on the sea.
We used to ride to work on Elephants, too. Had to quit because the Parking Lot Attendants got upset...
It is a western social contract if it is one at all, which I doubt. It's about money as are most things. It is also expensive and waste of effort but that's another Thread. For this one, it's a new duty for most alive today and serving in anyone's Navy and it is unlikely to be successful. Motorfirebox is correct in that you're attacking the symptom, not the problem.
What does "easier" have to do with moral rectitude? Why is it easier because it is on the sea? For that matter, what is easier, killing Pirates? Easier than trying to stop a civil war fomented by a 'do-good' mentality with air power alone? Sorry, I cannot see the logic in that statement.
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Practicability has a lot to do with doing good.
Interesting statement. Suffice to say I suspect not everyone agrees and that smacks of moral equivalence -- which is okay but which is considered by most who espouse doing good as evil or nearly so...
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Evil is being done in places, many places.
As it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be...:D
True dat -- and it absolutely, positively is not going to be stopped by the application of force, particularly if that force is applied in support of one set of persons against another. You may suppress it temporarily but it won't stop.
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But we have a prior contract to stop the evil on the high seas. This contract has helped to ensure human prosperity over thousands of years. We, hard fact that it is, don't have prior contract in the other places.
We? Who is this 'we?' Not to be snarky but isn't that assuming a lot of personal responsibility for decisions that are not one person's to make? Forming a collective that may or may not exist?
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We may have a moral obligation depending on the circumstances, and we have discussed that at length before
As an example, we did discuss -- and disagreed. Still do.
I do not agree that anyone has a prior contract to "stop evil on the high seas," Nor do I believe anyone has a current contract to impose their view of morality on anyone else by force.
I thus am confused by any one who wishes to to apply force to punish one set of criminals while applying other force to save another set of them...
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Moral obligations are a little harder to act upon because we didn't tell the people, yes we will defend you, as we have with the merchant sailors over the ages.
Nations do not, cannot, have morals. Morality is an individual construct. Again, no one told Merchant Seamen that, it just happened through a series of events.
Let me make one thing clear. I have no problem with blowing Pirates out of the water. Nor do I have a problem with wreaking death and destruction on Daffy and Co. However, I do not see either activity as a moral imperative. The first is an ineffective partial solution to a minor problem; the second an ineffective partial solution likely to create a bigger problem. Where I see your positions disconnect is in the bloodthirsty unequivocal desire to clobber Pirates bouncing off the strongly stated desire to 'protect' a set of almost equally criminal persons from another set of same. i.e. You want to kill off one set of Pirate and encourage the probable foundation of another set... :confused::eek:
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I don't see any dichotomy, just very different problems, places and people.
The people do differ. The places are irrelevant, practically speaking, the problems are different but the people are doing things that are wrong in all cases, yet you propose that one batch of wrongdoing (the least harmful to others) is far, far worse than the other two which are arguably more detrimental to more people -- and see no dichotomy? Okay. We can disagree on that as well. :wry:
We'll have to agree to disagree.
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Originally Posted by
carl
Dead pirates, poof, no piracy. My contention is sea policing is what keeps piracy at bay.
The IMO disagrees but what do they know...
The Navies you malign also disagree. They're stupid, too, I suppose.
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Navies are the ones who do sea policing. You can call them coast guards or maritime constabularies or whatever you want but they are an organized military force and they chase down pirates.
You can call them what you wish but the fact is that Navies and Coast Guard like organizations have quite different organizations, training, roles and missions. They are not interchangeable anymore than are police and soldiers.
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If the navies aren't trained and equipped for little work like chasing pirates they probably should get trained and equipped. Though I think they are equipped and trained just fine if only the politicians would let them get at it.
I believe that suggests a bit more research on your part might be helpful for you.
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I think I will have it both ways as to chasing pirates being police work and navy work. Cops chase robbers and navies chase sea robbers. Seems the same to me.
Well, it's certainly a simple solution...
What one does if the citizens for various reasons do not themselves obey the law or exercise common sense in where they go and how they do it and there are not enough Cops while the size of the area makes Cochise County look like one small urban block is another issue, I suppose... :rolleyes:
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Stop the pirates because they are harming innocent people. Make some effort to stop the dictator from harming innocent people. I still see no dichotomy.
Obviously.
No matter, no sense boring others as this has become futile. G'day...
Fun is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
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Originally Posted by
carl
What is the IMO?
LINK.
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Maligning navies? I didn't mean to, especially the sailors on the ships. Timid admirals and equally timid politicians, I did mean to malign them.
Slap paint around with careless abandon and an over sized brush and it'll splatter on everything, wrong color or not...
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I don't know much about how navies and coast guards are trained and organized in other countries, but I do know a tiny bit about how they work in the US. They seem to do a lot of the same things. Coasties go after drug runners as does the Navy.
Apparently you don't know nearly as much as you presume. The CG goes after the druggies, the Navy assists and carries these (LINK) when it does so. By law...
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The Navy goes after subs and in WWII at least...when the Coast Guard is buying their biggest cutters one of the considerations is how they will be able to handle navy type fighting.
Again basically true but awfully simplistic. What I've been trying to point out as nicely as I can -- in all those long posts which are not fun -- you don't understand all you know about what you're saying. You're well read but you're missing a bunch of detail and nuance that no fiction and few histories can impart... :wry:
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More research into anything is always...only the will is lacking. That has to come from on high.
Yet again too simplistic. There are political constraints, no question. That's reality. The fact that you and JMA asked why Entropy called the Pirate ports sanctuaries when that is a political constraint -- whether you two like it or agree with it is totally immaterial -- if you do not know why those restraints exist, then you're arguing from a position of ignorance. That can be corrected, thus my suggestion that you might wish to do some more research into things before you start laying out policies that no one will be able to follow and slamming people with the weight of flawed perception and the inaccuracy of limited understanding.
OTOH, if you do know why they are sanctuaries and just do not agree they should be, that's fine but I'm sure you know that your disagreement with that policy of many governments around the world is unlikely to change a thing simply because you don't think it is a good policy.
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I don't understand the paragraph about Cochise County.
Compared to a one block urban area, Cochise County AZ is massive. Compared to the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean is far more massive. The Gulf is covered by counter drug hunting vessels and the Druggies still get through. The allegory is that you want 'one urban block and a big squad of ten NYC Cops success' in a 'vast Cochise county sized desert area with the same ten urban trained Cops.' Not an ideal scenario, wrong Cops in an unfamiliar environment with the wrong equipment (a Crown Vic works in NYC -- not so much in the Arizona desert).
The Indian Ocean is huge, the number of naval ships from all nations is relatively small, they are doing their best but it is not, to them an overwhelmingly important mission and the fact that you believe it should be has little effect. That belief certainly does not increase the number of Naval ships, decrease the number of Pirates or make the Indian Ocean one bit smaller...
The best they can do -- and this would be true with double the number of ships and far looser ROE and policies -- is deter some piracy. They cannot stop it and wishing they could or thinking they should be able to do so will not change the reality. Or the political impingements.
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Hopefully others aren't bored. I'm not at all. This is fun.
I'm glad you think so. It might be more fun if you had some grounding in the reality of what Navies do, how and why they do it and had a less cavalier and doctrinaire attitude toward things you do not seem to fully understand. Also be helpful if you didn't discount the political problems -- they're easy for you to dismiss, not at all easy for elected politicians to do so.
OTOH, I'm not sure that anything to do with discussing the rather serious business of people living or dying is all that much fun -- as opposed to participating ion the activity, that can be fun. I am sure that trying to broaden your understanding at possibly excessive length and having you ignore most of the important items to concentrate on the quick and to you significant theoretical and belief oriented items to the exclusion of the practical constraints and realities is not fun...