Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
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...
...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.
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...
Evil is being done in places, many places.
As it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be...

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.
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?
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...
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...
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.