Stopping Piracy

Pirates are running amuck near Somali and nobody seems to care enough to actually do something about it.

One of the more recent events did involve a ship that had hired some seagoing guards. But I'm really not sure what the point of the guards actually was.

SOMALI pirates have hijacked the chemical tanker Biscaglia, despite the presence of three British guards onboard.

The guards were unarmed.

There was a time when you could count on the US Navy to respond to piracy on international shipping.

In the old days, seizing a ship marked by a national flag was an insult and act of war. In 1803 pirates of the Barbary States, city-states along the north coast of Africa in the Mediterranean that were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, captured the U.S.S. Philadelphia and held its crew hostage. President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress for and received authorization to dispatch sailors and marines to the port of Tripoli, where the ship was being held. To deny its use to the Tripolitans U.S. forces burned it and captured the city.

But these days I guess we're only the World Policeman when it involves a head-of-state who had previously pissed off our Presidents daddy.

But pirates? We just let them go on and on.

Number of ships hijacked this year: 40.

Ransom collected so far: $25,000,000.

Why?