The Pirate Hostage Situation Off the Horn of Africa

A day or two ago, we had a nasty little hostage situation 350 miles off the coast of Somalia, where four pirates were holding a ship's captain--Capt. Richard Phillips--in a lifeboat that was out of fuel. Thankfully, the ship, Maersk Alabama, was retaken by the crew, and has sailed on to its destination. The Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge is standing watch over the captain.

But here's where the situation begins to unravel: Captain Philips attempted to escape by jumping off the lifeboat and swimming away! Go Captain Philips! That is a brave and ballsy thing to do. Surely we could expect that the security forces monitoring this situation would be ready to assist in such an endeavor? Well, apparently not. The captain was recaptured and brought back on board the lifeboat by the pirates.

As if that isn't bad enough, we now hear that other pirates are converging on the lifeboat, bringing with them dozens of hostages taken from other ship hijackings; sort of a pirate's convention. Now, the Navy and the FBI negotiators will have to deal with additional factors that make this incident much more complicated. The old saying that "He who hesitates is lost" is apparently not one that our hostage negotiators are familiar with. They should follow Captain Philip's example of decisive leadership.

Sadly, my prediction is that eventually the situation will be negotiated and that large sums of money will pass from the insurance companies to the pirates. And the next day, the pirates will be out on the water hijacking more merchant ships for their cargo or ransom.

Diplomats and corporations can discuss and debate all they want. The only real diplomatic policy is the one that the Marines used two hundred years ago. You have to kill enough pirates that the rest give up.