More Piracy Near Somalia

[Stan]

Yeah... cargo's harder to move and easier to track, though. If they start doing that, it really would be pretty easy to send in some shooters and roll up enough pirates to have an overall effect.

I used to think that too until Sabena's 747 landed and the 90 odd tons of cargo was absconded with in under an hour. They didn't appear overly concerned with who was watching and even offered me Becks lager at less than half the price. I bought three cases that day

I just don't think that's realistic. We could do it, sure. But we won't. If we send in ground forces, there will be cameras everywhere and we're going to spend most of our time responding to ambushes and talking to Anderson Cooper about how terrible it all is. And we'll leave a year or two later, and piracy will spring right back up.

If we went in with the will to actually kill a lot of Somalis, it'd probably work. We don't have that will.

Not that hiring a proxy force would be easy, but it would allow the West to save face when things went south - which probably would occur. Sort of like an African version of PMCs with no rules of engagement and unlimited ammunition. I can think of a few off the top of my head already (before the acronym PMC was even invented).

In the end it would have little to do with how many pirates were killed, rather, how swift and brutal a blow was dealt. Whatever was left behind would be scarfed up by the locals. Sounds terrible, I know, but that's how things are typically done and for some strange reason with no immediate remorse or threats of payback.

The press wouldn't be invited nor would most of them contemplate even going. Watched that too with them hiding behind US and French troops taking the same boring pictures every day rather than going outside the wire on their own (because they always came back robbed blind back then ).