More Piracy Near Somalia

[Stan]

I find the opinions of some on this topic to be pretty confusing, when taken in comparison to their opinion on Libya and the Ivory Coast. In the latter two (and I recognize that there are many who say we shouldn't be involved in any of the three), there are those who are all for sending in our forces to blow up the bad guys and 'fix what we broke'. When it comes to Somalia, though, many of those same voices say we should just attrit the pirates until they go back to shooting at each other instead of (not, for the most part) shooting at hostages. This, despite that the US has had a far more direct role in Somalia's current condition than Libya's or, for that matter, the Ivory Coast's.

I'll echo Carl's well-put response - piracy is dealt with somewhat differently than civil war and/or a humanitarian crisis regardless of the country of origin.
As far as US involvement in the three countries goes, we have a lot of colorful history in all three and could be easily viewed as culprits.

But we broke stuff in Somalia, too, and the stuff we broke led directly to our current predicament.

I think what we did (or politically hamstrug and failed to do) in Somalia was stay out of yet another internal matter that our administration knew little about and thought we would strong arm for a while and get out. Instead we lost some good people and simply left while the getting was good. That, however, hardly got the pirates started.