To the extent it isn’t obvious, I was speaking specifically to the question of whether the Alabama incident will serve as a deterrent to future pirate attacks. I think it will, in that the pirate thinking process might go something like this: “Gee, I’d sure love to prove my pirate chops by effing around with the US Navy, but that didn’t work out so well for Mohammed and Khalid. On second thought, count me out.”

Or “We’d better do whatever we’re going to do within 5 days.”

Since then, Israel has agreed to negotiate, and agreed to give in quite a few times. Currently they’re agreeing to negotiate with an enemy who doesn’t even recognize them (Hamas), for a prisoner they’re holding just a few kilometers from the Israeli border. Talk about Israeli deterrence.

Perhaps the issue will poll so the writers for the TOTUS teleprompter have Obama attack pirate outposts on land and blockade their boats.

Lol. Really?

How about this: the negotiations were completely sincere and Obama presented the on-scene commander with rules of engagement as strictly engineered as possible to prevent any military action from interfering with the diplomacy.

The commander, presented with rules of engagement specifically designed to frustrate a suitable outcome, maintained communication with the snipers he had deployed on the fantail or other strategic places on the ship, and when the unexpected happened and the three incredibly stupid Somalis exposed their heads at the same time, he cleared the snipers to fire and started making up some imminent danger bullshit.

How do I know that happened? It’s what I would have done had I been in charge, and everyone knows how Johnny-on-the-spot I am in hostage situations. What would you have done?

Do you honestly believe that the snipers were so lucky that all three snipers exposed their noggins at the precise moment that one of them decided to make overtly threatening gestures at the hostage, who was tied up inside of a big, orange, floating peanut? It beggars the imagination, this scenario of yours.

Do you honestly think that Obama could have given rules of engagement that were any MORE restrictive than the ones he gave? If so, what would they have been? “You can only act with deadly force if the hostage’s life is in imminent danger and Jesus is not present in the flesh”? Face it, had Obama restricted the RoE a hair more than he did, he would have been obviously in contempt of the safety of the hostage.

The only way that a standoff has the best possible outcome like this one did is when someone dares to take a risk. Do you really believe, knowing what you know, that the someone taking a risk was Barrack “Present” Obama?

Yeah, I don’t see how letting four guys in a little boat keep jerking around the U.S. Navy for the better part of a week is setting any kind of bad precedent. I’m sure everything will be fine now.
Jim Treacher on April 13, 2009 at 1:57 PM

You must choose a course of action. You either negotiate to try and save the hostage, or you sacrifice the hostage and kill the pirates. Once you choose to try and save the hostage, you sit and wait and make it happen.

Once the Navy got the right personnel on board the Bainbridge to take out the pirates, they simply waited patiently for their opportunity. They may have had one earlier when the Captain jumped overboard, but Obama wouldn’t authorize force. Maybe not. We don’t have the documents and don’t know.

What we do know is that at least on Sunday, it appears that
the Navy was patiently waiting for the pirates to screw up. Lo and behold, eventually three of them came in view of the sniper nests on the Bainbridge and simultaneously made a threatening gesture to the Captain. When they happened, the ROE rules of “imminent danger” were satisfied and the SEALs took out 3 out of 4.

Jim Treacher on April 13, 2009 at 3:30 PM

To the extent it isn’t obvious, I was speaking specifically to the question of whether the Alabama incident will serve as a deterrent to future pirate attacks. I think it will, in that the pirate thinking process might go something like this: “Gee, I’d sure love to prove my pirate chops by effing around with the US Navy, but that didn’t work out so well for Mohammed and Khalid. On second thought, count me out.”

The more difficult issue, and the one that you clearly have in mind, is how this incident reflects on US policy vis-a-vis terrorists. I take your point, but even if terrorists around the world perceive our response here as a sign of weakness (and I don’t think they will, given how things turned out), it’s probably unwise for anyone to assume that we’d have responded the same way if we had been dealing with terrorists instead of pirates.

Somebody recently said “Words must mean something.”

The Obama administration is claiming credit for giving the go-ahead for military action. But this presents Obama with a problem.

Maybe I’m swayed by the MSM’s fawning spin, which has declared it an ‘early military victory for Obama’, but this event also has a certain, very premature, ‘mission accomplished’ feeling to it.

Snipers tend to keep the negotiations short…

right2bright on April 13, 2009 at 1:13 PM

Negotiations with a ghost.

Infidoll on April 13, 2009 at 2:33 PM

America’s performance on the world stage is “inside baseball”?

So, I’ll give O the benefit of the doubt it took some time to mobilize the right folks for the job. This coming from the son of a 21 year UDT/SEAL veteran.
KineticJustice on April 13, 2009 at 3:12 PM

Okay, I’ll go along with that.

Searching for ways to fault Obama on this successful operation seem to me to be lame. Obama was unable to give credit to any success that Bush did. Let’s not sink to that level.

The fault with O lies not with the success of the operation but rather with the delayed success of the operation due to his stall in giving the Navy permission to do what they could have done on Wed. when Phillips jumped in the water.

GarandFan: You forgot to add “and John Murtha’s statement that they committed murder”. Along with the outrage by several other congressional members. I’m sure all of this will come up in the planned pirate hearings by John Kerry.

Yeah, I don’t see how letting four guys in a little boat keep jerking around the U.S. Navy for the better part of a week is setting any kind of bad precedent.

Jim Treacher on April 13, 2009 at 1:57 PM

That’s inside baseball. The bottom line is that the pirates undertand that attacking an American ship is a very bad idea (since the downside of being dead outweighs the benefit of being able to “jerk around” the US Navy for a few days). This post was about the deterrent effect of our strategy, not about whether you or I think we should have used force sooner than we did.

So negotiating as a ruse is the worst of all alternatives. It does not have the deterrent effect of the Israeli approach, or the hostage-safety effect of the negotiation approach.

In terms of the deterrent effect, I don’t see how negotiating as a ruse differs from the Israeli approach. The ultimate message is the same, no? And it has the added benefit of effing with them.

But oh it’s hard not to chuckle at the irony of

Queen0fCups on April 13, 2009 at 1:17 PM

I suspect the real reason it took so long to reach a resolution is because Obama was waiting to see what the consensus among his worshipers was. He bases his decisions on polls and popularity. I’m surprised there is no American Idol style phone line at the White House yet.

The Seal snipers probably had the pirates zeroed in for hours, just waiting…

/

I see a stay at the re-education camp in your future…

Obama does not consider words to have any binding meaning unto themselves, to him they are just a tool.

Thus, any Words used do not mean we are bound to any single course of action, such as the old “we don’t negotiate with Terrorists” doctrine which has been in place for many years.

To Obama, they are just words with no meaning… a means to an end, not a binding statement of philosophy used to guide the Nation…

So negotiating as a ruse is the worst of all alternatives. It does not have the deterrent effect of the Israeli approach, or the hostage-safety effect of the negotiation approach.

Great analysis…but what you say here is so obvious it really shouldn’t need to be said.

Unfortunately, in our current era of apologizing appeasement, it does need to be said.

This is the model Obama initially appeared to follow with the pirates. But if one believes the spin coming out of the White House, then negotiation was a ruse to buy time.

This spin is garbage by the way. Every news article on this says that Obama authorized force in case of “imminent danger of the Captain”. Since Obama didn’t consider being a hostage as being in imminent danger the shooting wasn’t supposed to happen. It only did because the flimsiest of excuses presented itself. The Navy should never have been put in this position and they should have had the authority to take out the “pirates” at the first good opportunity.