Hang 'EM High
April 12, 2009
For a young Somali, piracy's a glamorous profession, the local equivalent of being a Manhattan hedge-fund manager a few years back: His risk is minimal, the rewards are huge - and there's no punishment for pillaging other people's wealth.
Just as we encouraged those strutting wizards of finance not long ago, we now embolden pirates.
In this infernally complex world, some things are simple. If there's no serious penalty for lucrative bad behavior, the bad behavior will spread. That's the story of Somalia's Skull and Bones club.
Coping with pirates is also simple. We make it hard by agonizing over the "human rights" of these seagoing terrorists. This week, as a powerful US warship loomed over a bobbing lifeboat, FBI negotiators begged for understanding from thugs who had attacked a ship flying our flag.
The correct approach would have been to lower boats with armed sailors and take the Somalis, dead or alive. Does anyone really think the pirates would've harmed their hostage captain, adding to their crime?
Historically, civilized nations understood how to handle pirates: When captured, pirates were hanged. When found, their bases were destroyed. That worked. But threatening to put one pirate in a thousand in a posh European cell where he gets free visits from a prostitute isn't much of a deterrent when a single successful raid on a ship can bring in millions of dollars.
Yeah, "citizens of the world" will cry that "You can't just hang pirates!" Sure you can. It's easy. If you're short of rope, wire will do. The only serious question arises once the noose is around the pirate's throat: Should we drop him over the side and let the rope snap his neck, or raise him up on a spar and let him suffocate slowly?
Our talk-talk president needs to get serious now: We can't let a handful of pirates in speedboats make an ass of our trillion-dollar Navy while seizing ships flying our flag. Even Thomas Jefferson, one of our most anti-military presidents, understood that pirates had to be met with violent force. Jefferson put an end (well, almost) to the tribute money the Barbary pirates demanded as part of their seagoing jihad. Any ransom money paid to redeem a US-flagged ship today is tribute money, even if a private corporation provides the cash.
Force isn't the answer to every problem, but it's the only answer to some problems.
Of course, piracy is only the immediate concern. Behind this thriving industry lies the cancerous long-term problem of Somalia, an imaginary state that retreating European powers grafted incompetently onto a muddle of tribes.
Fake states, such as Somalia, Afghanistan or even Pakistan, may be the most vexing strategic problem of our time - even more challenging than Islamist terrorism. Throughout Africa and the greater Middle East and on to Southeast Asia, European imperialists drew boundaries in cynical ignorance.
Artificial borders that just don't work are the poisoned pills the Europeans left behind for their former subjects to swallow. Some frontiers, such as those of India or Ghana, can be made to work. Others, in make-believe states like Somalia, will never be functional.
Somalia, where the per capita income is about $600 (even with piracy thrown in) was created in 1960, when former British and Italian colonies were slapped together with inadequate glue. There was no national identity, only tribal loyalty. The "state" soon collapsed into a military dictatorship that held the country together with brute force.
When the dictatorship fell, all pretense of statehood went with it. As Americans know all too well, this violent territory, whose bogus straight-line borders ignore tribal boundaries, degenerated into anarchy overnight.
By the time my not-yet-wife covered the US military involvement in that hopeless place in early 1993, the only "unspoiled" village she could find, where traditional Somali life went unhindered, was a leper colony - Somali gunmen were afraid to enter it.
Deprived of heavy weapons by the Clinton-era Pentagon, our military nonetheless shattered the warlords' hold on Mogadishu, the pretend-capital of the pretend-state. Instantly, Bill Clinton, perhaps our most cowardly president, took fright and ran away, humiliating our military and encouraging al Qaeda to believe that the US had lost its will.
The clan wars that followed "Black Hawk Down" might be called "medieval," except that there was no chivalry involved and the weapons were deadlier. The country splintered into its organic parts. In the far north, the region known as Somaliland self-organized and sought independence from the badlands in the south.
But the "international community," led by our bumptious State Department, insists that every border in the world today has been in place since the Paleolithic Era and can never change. We told the people of Somaliland, who were struggling to live decent lives, that they had to remain a part of the lawless state we all pretend exists.
Pretty much the same thing happened in Puntland, another northern territory. The locals wanted to break free of the warring clans and terrorists to the south. We told them they "belong" to Somalia.
This isn't strategy. It's deadly moral sloth.
And so, in this impoverished, shot-apart land with its 2,000 miles of coastline and half its population sixteen or under, piracy looks like a smart career move.
If there's no penalty, only huge rewards, why not hoist the Muslim Jolly Roger?
We can't fix Somalia. But we could help ourselves by getting over our fantasy that it's a "sovereign state." We can fix the pirate problem: By sinking pirate vessels, hanging pirates (in accordance with the traditional laws of the sea), striking their bases and sinking every vessel in their harbors.
Thomas Jefferson fought. Will Barack Obama offer the pirates a bailout?
Ralph Peters is Fox News' Strategic Analyst. His latest book is "Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."