RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors.

RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (Full Version)

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scarlethiney -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:47:33 AM)
In theory Steel I understand what your saying. We have to do something to stop this terrorism. The problem is the people who most need this assistance are not the people who are in a position to stop the terrorism or to do anything about it. Penalizing the government by withholding help won't change anything. It will just ensure more who desperately need our help die. Charity should begin at home and we are doing a poor job of helping our own. That does not mean we should also give up on helping others.

servantforuse -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:48:10 AM)
According to the Rev. Al Sharpton these are not pirates. They are a 'voluntary coast guard' trying to protect the Somali fishing rights. It just doesn't get much better than that. This guy is something else.

popeye1250 -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:48:55 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mcbride quote: And why are we giving countries like Somalia and Ethiopia "food aid?" Fuck em, let them starve. I think it's outragious that my govt is doing such a thing with me Taxdollars! You're feeding them because, as a human being, it never entered your head to just stand there and watch children starve to death while you wolf down your dinner. McBride, I believe in taking care of our own first. Again, it's not part of the job description of our govt to be doing this kind of thing. If the people in Washington "feel sorry" for people in foreign countries then maybe they need to resign from govt. service and go to work for a charity at half the pay. And I don't like being held to a differant standard because I'm American while foreign countries pull all kinds of scams on us and suck Taxdollars out of us while those in Washington get rich from it! It's long time ongoing sucker's game. I'm sorry but I just don't feel "sorry" for people in foreign countries. They need to start doing for themselves after 50 years or so of "foreign aid." We can't give disabled veterans in this country a decent raise but there's "no problem" comming up with $34.6 B in foreign aid? "Foreign aid" should last for 3 or 4 years, not 50 years! And every single penny of it should be repaid with interest. Washington is supposed to be running our govt. not a charity for foreign countries. Foreign countries go to the lobbyists on k street to steal Taxpayer Dollars. And everyone knows what's going on!

ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:50:10 AM)
Popeye, you were in both the Navy and the Coast Guard, right? What about the idea of putting a carrier just offshore, establishing a few safe transit corridors near the ports and the mouth of the gulf, swinging the ocean routes a couple hundred miles farther out, and putting a couple of flights of F-18s over the safe transit lanes? Expensive, sure, but in the time it takes for a fishing boat full of pirates to try to board a ship, an F-18 can cover a couple of hundred miles without breaking a sweat. With the safe transit corridors, you only have a few discrete areas that would need to be covered, instead of the half million square miles the pirates are currently operating in. Do you think that's feasible, at least as a starting point?

kittinSol -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:51:03 AM)
Besides, Scarlet, what Popeye describes as 'foreign aid' is no charity. No Western government 'gives' anything away purely for altruistic purposes: they get something back in return BIG time.

servantforuse -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:53:02 AM)
This is a hugh area to patrol. There is 1900 miles of coastline going out several hundred miles. We would need half of our Navy over there.

scarlethiney -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 11:58:38 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: kittinSol You know it's not my position; but I'm getting seriously fucked off with the "carpet bomb 'them'" attitude, basically putting 'th!em' all in the same bag (ie. 'they' are all Africans, so innocent or not, 'they' all deserve to die for the exactions of a few of 'them'). I'm also gobsmacked by the hypocrisy of those people who advocate in favour of arming themselves against their own government from within the confines and comfort of their own fortress, whilst telling other citizens from other countries that they cannot defend their own interests. I understand that desperation makes people resort to criminality. It's called survival: when there's no law in one's country, and other countries take advantage of that, when you have no education and little food, but plenty of guns... tell me. What would YOU do? Exactly !

popeye1250 -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:06:21 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: scarlethiney In theory Steel I understand what your saying. We have to do something to stop this terrorism. The problem is the people who most need this assistance are not the people who are in a position to stop the terrorism or to do anything about it. Penalizing the government by withholding help won't change anything. It will just ensure more who desperately need our help die. Charity should begin at home and we are doing a poor job of helping our own. That does not mean we should also give up on helping others. Scarlet, most of the world is poor. The U.S. is now a poor country, we're $10Trillion in debt. Our govt. shouldn't be in the "foreign charity" business, it's not their job. It's funny but many of the people who advocate helping people in foreign countries can't seem to "find their checkbooks" if they're asked for a donation, they expect "the govt" to do it and then the crooks in Washington make billions from it. The U.S. govt is beholden to The People of this country and no-one else. It doesn't make any sense to feed people in third world countries so that thay can overpopulate and become even more miserable and blame first world countries for their misery and spawn more terrorists and pirates. At a certain point you can't feed all of them anymore and they'll die anyway. How is it "humanitarian" to do that to a country? In the wild when one animal preys on another they say not to interfere with nature.

ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:07:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: kittinSol You know it's not my position; but I'm getting seriously fucked off with the "carpet bomb 'them'" attitude, basically putting 'them' all in the same bag (ie. 'they' are all Africans, so innocent or not, 'they' all deserve to die for the exactions of a few of 'them'). I'm also gobsmacked by the hypocrisy of those people who advocate in favour of arming themselves against their own government from within the confines and comfort of their own fortress, whilst telling other citizens from other countries that they cannot defend their own interests. I understand that desperation makes people resort to criminality. It's called survival: when there's no law in one's country, and other countries take advantage of that, when you have no education and little food, but plenty of guns... tell me. What would YOU do? I didn't think it was your position, but I think you have to admit there does seem to be a tendency in your posts to excuse their behavior on the grounds that they have no other choice. The second paragraph in this very post, for example, reads exactly that way to me. These people are not "defending their interests"; ships from other countries are just trying to sail past Somalia carrying cargo meant for other ports, and these pirates are sailing out to them, sezing their ships, kidnapping and sometimes murdering the innocent crewmembers, and then demanding that the owners of the ship pay multi-million dollar ransoms to get the crew and the ship back. And then they're using those millions to set themselves up in lives of luxury while their own children starve to death. How in the world is that "defending their interests?" You're right, they are resorting to criminality. That's all it is, just mugging on a grand scale, pure and simple, and the condtions that led to it may explain it but they do not excuse it. Right now, today, these criminals are kidnapping and murdering innocent human beings who are just trying to make a living and feed their own families, for no other reason than that the victims are easy targets. And that has to be stopped. If the neighbor kid is getting mauled by a pit bull, I'm not going to sit there agonizing over what terrible things might have happened to that pit bull to make it turn out that way - I'm just going to shoot the damned dog before he kills the kid. That doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to animal abuse - it just means that saving the innocent child from being mauled is more important than worrying about whether the dog that is mauling him was abused. You can still address the underlying issue of animal abuse after the child is safe, but right now, that particular dog has to die so that the child doesn't. I don't see this piravy issue as any different.

N4SDChastity -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:07:50 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: servantforuse This is a hugh area to patrol. There is 1900 miles of coastline going out several hundred miles. We would need half of our Navy over there. That's more than half a million miles... We would need our ENTIRE Flotta Naval, out there.

mcbride -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:10:41 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: popeye1250 quote: ORIGINAL: mcbride quote: And why are we giving countries like Somalia and Ethiopia "food aid?" Fuck em, let them starve. I think it's outragious that my govt is doing such a thing with me Taxdollars! You're feeding them because, as a human being, it never entered your head to just stand there and watch children starve to death while you wolf down your dinner. McBride, I believe in taking care of our own first. Again, it's not part of the job description of our govt to be doing this kind of thing. Men, women, and children are starving to death while you eat your dinner. What you do about it has nothing to do with government. That some food aid winds up in the wrong hands has everything to do with western governments trying to give the appearance of helping without putting in the resources needed to make sure it all goes where it's intended. What that has to do with you, as a human being, enthusiastically supporting the deaths of those children, I'm not sure.

ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:12:22 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: servantforuse This is a hugh area to patrol. There is 1900 miles of coastline going out several hundred miles. We would need half of our Navy over there. Sure, but what's the range of those small fishing boats the pirates are using? I honestly don't know. I've never been on one. If their effective range is several hundred miles, than obviously my scheme isn't going to work, but if they can only operate a hundred or so miles off the coast, then putting the merchant traffic out a couple of hundred miles and establishing a few safe transit lanes near the ports might be doable. It would all depend on the distances involved and the range of the pirate ships, neither of which I know anything about.

popeye1250 -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:18:09 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda Popeye, you were in both the Navy and the Coast Guard, right? What about the idea of putting a carrier just offshore, establishing a few safe transit corridors near the ports and the mouth of the gulf, swinging the ocean routes a couple hundred miles farther out, and putting a couple of flights of F-18s over the safe transit lanes? Expensive, sure, but in the time it takes for a fishing boat full of pirates to try to board a ship, an F-18 can cover a couple of hundred miles without breaking a sweat. With the safe transit corridors, you only have a few discrete areas that would need to be covered, instead of the half million square miles the pirates are currently operating in. Do you think that's feasible, at least as a starting point? Panda, yes (USN-USCG Ret.) Also what they could do is have about ten or twenty Destroyers there, marshall thirty or forty ships together in a convoy and have one of the Destroyers escort them. They'd be no match for a Destroyer with their 5" naval guns with an accurate range of about 21 miles I think. When they got those ships out of harms way take another convoy back the other way. And they should send planes over the coast and machine gun anything that can float. Also they could have a "no-go zone" of from 25 miles out that if any coastal craft were caught past 25 miles they'd be automatically fired on.

N4SDChastity -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:18:46 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda quote: ORIGINAL: servantforuse This is a hugh area to patrol. There is 1900 miles of coastline going out several hundred miles. We would need half of our Navy over there. Sure, but what's the range of those small fishing boats the pirates are using? I honestly don't know. I've never been on one. If their effective range is several hundred miles, than obviously my scheme isn't going to work, but if they can only operate a hundred or so miles off the coast, then putting the merchant traffic out a couple of hundred miles and establishing a few safe transit lanes near the ports might be doable. It would all depend on the distances involved and the range of the pirate ships, neither of which I know anything about. My understand is that the smaller attack craft are operating from larger "Mother" craft. The smaller, lighter, (locally) faster boats have a range of probably 100-150 miles (round-trip) max. The mother ships ability to move obviously makes this operational range much, much wider since they don't always have to return to the mother ship, just get "close." Seriously, it's about 500,000+ square miles. ALL of the "friendly" naval vessels on the planet would not be enough to command & control such an area. Hell, even establishing safe corridors of travel would be tenuous, at best. Anybody with a 6th grade education could outwit even the best of plans to establish such a "safe" travel lane. Sure, but what's the range of those small fishing boats the pirates are using? I honestly don't know. I've never been on one. If their effective range is several hundred miles, than obviously my scheme isn't going to work, but if they can only operate a hundred or so miles off the coast, then putting the merchant traffic out a couple of hundred miles and establishing a few safe transit lanes near the ports might be doable. It would all depend on the distances involved and the range of the pirate ships, neither of which I know anything about. EDYT: hadda fix tha formating

scarlethiney -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:19:43 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: kittinSol Besides, Scarlet, what Popeye describes as 'foreign aid' is no charity. No Western government 'gives' anything away purely for altruistic purposes: they get something back in return BIG time. I agree kittin. We have created our own issues whether from exclusion, racism and refusal to see what is right in front of us as well as helped to create the same issues in other countries we "support" . The true victims of these issues are those people who have neither the resources, basic sustenance or opportunity for any education to change those circumstances and so is it any wonder violence is an option? Here or there as you stated? You and I can have this conversation and understand this. We don't take terrorism lightly nor do we support innocent people being killed for any reason. The solution is charity and help and education and yes it costs. Aid may one day get the people who understand this best into the position to actually do something about these issues. Beating our chests and posturing and suggesting annihilation will only perpetuate more of the same. scarlet

slaveboyforyou -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:24:15 PM)
quote: Sure, but what's the range of those small fishing boats the pirates are using? I honestly don't know. I've never been on one. If their effective range is several hundred miles, than obviously my scheme isn't going to work, but if they can only operate a hundred or so miles off the coast, then putting the merchant traffic out a couple of hundred miles and establishing a few safe transit lanes near the ports might be doable. It would all depend on the distances involved and the range of the pirate ships, neither of which I know anything about. Well Panda, what they're doing is using "mother ship" to launch their small boats from. So they are operating hundreds of miles off the coast, and they do communicate with each other when they spot military vessels or aircraft. The mother ships are cargo ships the pirates hijacked. The problem with launching an attack on those mother ships is that they have hostages on board.

popeye1250 -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:25:16 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mcbride quote: ORIGINAL: popeye1250 quote: ORIGINAL: mcbride quote: And why are we giving countries like Somalia and Ethiopia "food aid?" Fuck em, let them starve. I think it's outragious that my govt is doing such a thing with me Taxdollars! You're feeding them because, as a human being, it never entered your head to just stand there and watch children starve to death while you wolf down your dinner. McBride, I believe in taking care of our own first. Again, it's not part of the job description of our govt to be doing this kind of thing. Men, women, and children are starving to death while you eat your dinner. What you do about it has nothing to do with government. That some food aid winds up in the wrong hands has everything to do with western governments trying to give the appearance of helping without putting in the resources needed to make sure it all goes where it's intended. What that has to do with you, as a human being, enthusiastically supporting the deaths of those children, I'm not sure. McBride, that's bullshit, I'm not going to assume the responsibility for people 12,000 miles away! It is their responsibility to keep themselves alive! Are you letting other countries off the hook for some reason? I don't understand why some people seem to think that "America" or "Western countries" are supposed to be "responsable for the world." Maybe it makes them "feel good" or feel good about themselves or some such nonsense.

kittinSol -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:26:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda I didn't think it was your position, but I think you have to admit there does seem to be a tendency in your posts to excuse their behavior on the grounds that they have no other choice. Maybe. Maybe it's a reaction to people like popeye saying that we should just take out an entire population because of a few criminals in complete blatant and deliberate ignorance of the post-colonial history of the region and of its present strife. You have to admit that it's a pretty poor show to say 'carpet bomb them all', no? This isn't a new problem after all: but somehow, it's okay to argue these populations should be bombed? Why are you letting that pass, Panda?

N4SDChastity -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:29:19 PM)
Every international conflict has a "tipping" point, where the general consensus is: Let's just kill them. Those pirates are moving towards that point, IMHO.

slvemike4u -> RE: Somali Pirates vow to go after American ships, kill Sailors. (4/15/2009 12:31:24 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: popeye1250 quote: ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda Popeye, you were in both the Navy and the Coast Guard, right? What about the idea of putting a carrier just offshore, establishing a few safe transit corridors near the ports and the mouth of the gulf, swinging the ocean routes a couple hundred miles farther out, and putting a couple of flights of F-18s over the safe transit lanes? Expensive, sure, but in the time it takes for a fishing boat full of pirates to try to board a ship, an F-18 can cover a couple of hundred miles without breaking a sweat. With the safe transit corridors, you only have a few discrete areas that would need to be covered, instead of the half million square miles the pirates are currently operating in. Do you think that's feasible, at least as a starting point? Panda, yes (USN-USCG Ret.) Also what they could do is have about ten or twenty Destroyers there, marshall thirty or forty ships together in a convoy and have one of the Destroyers escort them. They'd be no match for a Destroyer with their 5" naval guns with an accurate range of about 21 miles I think. When they got those ships out of harms way take another convoy back the other way. And they should send planes over the coast and machine gun anything that can float. Also they could have a "no-go zone" of from 25 miles out that if any coastal craft were caught past 25 miles they'd be automatically fired on. [/quote) This plan makes as much sense as the "carpet-bombing "option....you would have American naval resources operating convoy duty for an indeterminate period?Have you given this much thought,spent much time thinking about the reaction of the ship owners as they waste time steaming around in circles waiting for their turn in any proposed convoy slot.Do you understand what time is worth to these ship owners with deadlines and future commitments to uphold.Don't think you would have many enthusiastic shipping magnates applauding this plan. By the way Popeye just when did systematic starvation take root in America,where exactly are these starving Ameican villiages located? All of this in response to some thugs in what amounts to life boats....like killing a mosiquoto with an elephant gun.

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