Wow, the French are good for more then food!

The French Navy tracked Somalia pirates through the night after they attacked a ship called Safmarine Asia, and captured them at dawn.

The pirates also attacked another US vessel called the Liberty Sun, which was taken humanitarian aid to Kenya. They attacked using RPG's and small arms fire, but despite having 14 boats of armed men, were unable to board.

One of the lead pirates justified the upscale of attacks on US and French vessels by saying that "The U.S. and French governments should know this because they started the aggression on us."

I'm sorry, Pirate say what? We started what aggression? Last time I check you attacked two of our ships carrying humanitarian aid to your countries! God forbid we feed you starving kids.

How to F'Up some Pirates: The Videos

CNN has two great videos out about the Pirate Attacks in Somalia (which 4 more ships have been captured since my last post; One was Greek, and one was Lebanese-flagged Togo, 2 were small Egyptian fishing vessels). This video is an interview with Vice Admiral Gortney, Commander of the US Navy Fifth Fleet. He describes some of the tactics and choice made in regards to the rescue of Captain Phillips.

This is pretty interesting to me as a (former) Army wife, since the Navy hasn't had a huge jump on the action in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one freak out, I'm not saying they haven't done anything, it's just a little complicated when the war being fought is well... in a desert. And it's high time for the Navy to F*up some Pirates. The biggest parts of this are going to be Government support (which I think it has) and Public support (which I also think it has). Once the public is up in arms, it's very very very hard to ignore on the government level. Especially if you like your job, it pays to listen to the people.

The second video is a legal analysis on what to do with the captured Somali Pirate, who according to reports has been singing like a canary on a US Navy Vessel. I'll leave the complicated stuff to Ryan the 2L, since it's his specialty but I gleaned from it that basically we have him in military custody and we don't have to return him to anyone under international law. We do however, have a treaty with Kenya and it's possible he will be handed over to them. And I'm pretty sure Kenya might actually do something justified to him.

I'm personally in a complicated spot in this. I'm not a fan of "shoot first, ask questions later" as a general rule of warfare. BUT Ex-hole spent a large chunk of our marriage in Iraq, and many of our friends didn't come home because both sides in a war don't have to play by the same rules. I think if you're a damn pirate, you shouldn't expect to be given any sort of pause. When you kill people and hijack their shit for a living, you have to understand it may not look so good should you be caught.

At the same time, I don't know if it's possible for the US to declare "war" on the Pirates. We obviously can't declare war on Somalia (the entire country isn't behind this after all), but what can we do should this escalate further?

I guess we'll have to see.

Update: I just saw this article, and it looks like the Pentagon is planning some small special ops forays into Somalia and the Pirate strongholds. Game on!

Jack Sparrow never would have been this stupid.

Ryan the 2L over at TSLRF wrote a great blog on how the Pirates are responding to the rescue of the American Captain yesterday off the Somali Coast.

Check it out.

Thank you, US Navy Seals

The Captain of the Maersk Alabama, who gave himself as a hostage in place of his crew, was rescued from a lifeboat where he has floated for days with Somali Pirates. This has been going on for days (in case you've been living in a hole) and I'm sure everyone is thankful he is alive and safe.

I hope these attacks can be quelled, but well, I doubt much will be done by anyone seeing as no one has really tried yet. Except the French. But well... yeah.