"All relevant U.S. agencies are monitoring the situation, working to develop further information, assess options and possible responses,"
Somebody needs to give the word to get off their assesses and implement the only possible response - which also happens to be the reasonable response. In this case the pirates need to be stopped before they get back to dry land. That's what helicopters and arial refuling are for.
There comes a time when it is necessary to make certain sacrifices in order to deal with a situation such as piracy. While I admit that "it sucks to be you" is easy to say while I'm sitting here behind my keyboard, I'm fairly certain that I would say "sucks to be me" if I were one of the four aboard the yacht. Piracy was ended in the 19th century when the cost of doing business as a pirate got to be too high. Not only did pirates know that they would suffer death but that while they waited for death to catch up with them they would not be able enjoy the fruits of their work in leisure. That old "watching over the shoulder" thing gets tiresome. It's more than time to put a known effective solution back into practice.
I'm fairly certain that international law still says that going into the territory of another country in persuit of pirates is not an act of war. Also, I'm not convinced that Somalia actually qualifies as an actual "country", given its lack of any actual government. And for those that want to step up and say it has an actual government, I ask them to point me to what steps that government has taken against the piracy being committed. If there were no steps taken, then that government supports piracy, thus forfieting its right to protection under international law.
I say that while the US "monitor
the situation, work to develop further information, assess[es] options and possible responses" we hand-deliver a Letter of Marque to Congress and then walk it over to the White House and instruct Obama to sign it. after ratification of the Constitution, Congress authorized and the President signed Letters of Marque. A ship owner would send in an application stating the name, description, tonnage and force (armaments) of the vessel, the name and residence of the owner, the intended number of crew, and tendered a bond promising strict observance of the country's laws and treaties, and of international laws and customs. The commission was granted to the vessel, not to its captain, often for a limited time or specified area, and stated the enemy upon whom attacks were permitted.
While they are doing that they can tell the DoD to mothball a ship or two and then give them to us to use in creating artificial reefs in order to stimulate the fishing industry (our disposition of the ships condemned to us).
Nations often by treaty agreed to forego privateering, as England and France repeatedly did starting with the diplomatic overtures of Edward III in 1324; privateering nonetheless recurred in every war between them for the next 500 years.[25] Benjamin Franklin in 1792 attempted to persuade the French to lead by example and stop issuing Letters of Marque to their corsairs, but the effort floundered when war loomed with Britain once again.[26] Finally after the Congress of Paris at the end of the Crimean War, seven European nations signed the Paris Declaration of 1856 renouncing privateering, and forty-five more eventually joined them, which in effect abolished privateering worldwide.[27] The United States was not a signatory to that declaration because it advocated protecting all civilian property on the high seas. (emphasis added)
Other than getting Obama to sign the darned thing, anybody see a flaw that needs to be addressed?
stay safe.
