Mark My Words and Gird Your Loins: Young, Inexperienced President Tested as Second US Ship Seized by Pirates

Pirates are trying to distract us all from Obama's housing plan.

Will you let them get away with it?

Pirates seized a U.S.-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat with 16 crew on Saturday in the latest hijacking in the busy Gulf of Aden waterway, a regional maritime group said.

Andrew Mwangura, of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, said the crew were believed to be unharmed on the tugboat, which he added was operated from the United Arab Emirates.

...

"This incident shows the pirates are becoming more daring and violent," Mwangura told Reuters by phone.

Obama doesn't seem to be doing much about any of this except distancing himself from the situation, so as to avoid being Jimmy Carterized.

But he can't distance himself. He's the president, not a senator, not a community organizer, and not a candidate for president.

As I figured, Obama is seeking not to solve foreign policy crises through action, but to avoid giving them any press coverage by studiously refusing any comment, hoping to take the oxygen out of the story and hence limit how big it gets. Not solving the crisis, but merely trying to keep people from envisioning it as a crisis that needs solving at all.

By doing so he's signaled a reluctance to deal forcefully with the pirates, and, surprise surprise, they've become emboldened.

It's not like the GOP can make hay over this, however. It's not as if any Republican president ever said that weakness was provocative or anything.

Incidentally, I heard some pundit or analyst say a few days ago, regarding the captain of the last pirated ship held hostage, that "of course the Navy is not even considering the use of force at this time."

I didn't mention that because it wasn't clear to me if he was speaking in terms of his own bullshit speculation or if he actually knew something about the Navy's orders, as dictated to them by our Lightworker in Chief.

Let me point out the obvious: I sure the hell hope that the US Navy is at least considering the use of force against increasingly-bold pirates.

I would hope that the Navy "considered" stuff like that all the time. Indeed, I thought that was rather their whole deal, as the kids say.

Related; Mackubin Thomas Owens turns the useful post he wrote in the Corner into a full article at the WSJ. Mostly the same stuff I linked last time, but more formal and still worth a read.

Via Hot Air, with similar thoughts.

More: From Jenjhis' overnight thread, How to Stop Piracy.

There are several proposals but I think we can start and end with Arm the Crews. Apparently some of these pirates don't even carry guns.

posted by Ace at 12:23 PM

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