After the Rescue: What Now with Somalia?

Related Post: Combating Somali Piracy - How Many People Can We Afford To Kill?

UPDATE (15 April): Pirates have attacked The Liberty Sun, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship bound for Mombasa, Kenya, but failed to board the ship. Four other ships have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden since Sunday.

In the aftermath of the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates by US Navy SEALs, analysis has generally been dominated by cheerleading and a good bit of relief that the United States and (for supporters of the current Administration) President Obama have not appeared "weak". The New York Times breathlessly wrote, "To Rescue Captain, U.S. Snipers Held Steady Despite Many Moving Parts", while Watergate felon turned talk show host G. Gordon Liddy settled for, "Gman is joined by a former sniper who tells you what thoughts race through your mind when facing a killer".

Tristan McConnell, writing for our partners Global Post, goes an essential step farther. While Captain Phillips and his crew might be safe, the naval lanes off Somalia are not secure: "Short of escorting every one of the estimated 20,000 ships that use the Suez Canal every year, it is an impossible task to end piracy with navy patrols."

The obvious but difficult point? The piracy is connected to the economic and political instability in Somalia, and unless the US Government can dream up a military solution for the difficulties in Mogadishu --- "no one so far has managed to defeat Somalis by outgunning them, either on land or at sea" --- it's going to have to find a different approach that is far removed from the temporary solution of one-bullet sniping a pirate.

HOW TO STOP THE SOMALI PIRATES

Analysis: More Gunships May Not Be the Answer

NAIROBI — After the dramatic rescue of American captain Richard Phillips from the clutches of Somali pirates, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his determination to end piracy: “We remain resolved to halt the rise of piracy in this region,” he said.

Easier said than done. Dozens of international warships patrolling the Indian Ocean coastline have done little to deter the pirates.

And pirates seized an Italian tug with impunity even as the the world watched a small lifeboat of Somali pirates with their one solitary hostage facing down a flotilla of U.S. warships.

Currently the pirates hold more than a dozen ships with more than 200 hostages from a range of mostly poor countries.

Read rest of article....

Comments

[Josh Mull]

Excuse me, but I think we're all being a big bunch of hypocrites about this.

Why is it that everyone seems to be using this as a cute little way of implying that the United States should invade and occupy Somalia? Or y'know worse, like just conduct airstrikes and massacre a bunch of people "onshore" without even bothering to pretend to clean up the mess.

Yet these are the same who would instinctively condemn US aggression in Iraq or the slaughtering of civilians with drone strikes in Pakistan. Is Imperialism OK or isn't it? Either killing people is an acceptable solution to your problems, and therefor you can't criticize when neocons or anyone else reinterprets that for criminal ends, or violence is unacceptable, and any plan based on violence should be thoroughly rebuked and dismissed as entirely nonviable for that specific principle.

This bloodthirsty response from the press is selfish and indulgent of the worst human desires. We're very aware of the grisly and monstrous consequences of US Imperialism, and won't hesitate to proudly list those off to the uninformed, yet in this instance we seem perfectly capable of hiding behind it like cowards.

"Of course the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq, but these pirates are stealing our ships! Somalia is a failed state!"

So why isn't anyone asking the Chinese to invade Somalia? Isn't the US spending a f**kton of money on laser planes and robot dolphins because we're so terrified of the giant Red Army? Why not have the Turks invade Somalia, they're right in the neighborhood? Or hell, why not suggest that Hizb'allah invade Somalia, they seem to be exquisite masters of creating order within a failed state?

But no. We drop little hints and innuendos about "it won't be easy" but with the point of saying that the United States should use military force against the people of Somalia.

I say again, what a big bunch of hypocrites we are.

[patrickm]

‘The solution to the problem of pirates along the Somali coast, as seasoned observers argue, is to fix Somalia, a country that has become a byword for disaster and violence over the last 18 years. But that, like stopping piracy, is no easy task.’

Well how do you eat an elephant? Mouthful by mouthful! So where do ‘we’ start? ‘Who are our friends who are our enemies?’ What is our basic stance our basic point of view? Could it ever be pacifism? Didn’t the experience of WW2 see that dead end condemned to only remain ‘popular’ among the zombie politics of the utterly irrelevant; and isn’t this problem a perfect example of why?

Perspective drawing is in my experience very rewarding (and not being an artist I find it very difficult). The key question is deciding where you ‘stand’ and yet that’s the easy part. Then things can be made to ‘appear’ because the artist’s eye level determines a horizon and the centre of your picture is where you get depth to the vanishing point. You then follow rules that work back from that point in 360 degrees. It is, once you have established your point of view (POV), a quite mechanical process so that if you work in pencil and have plenty of time even a non artist can do useful work and a recognizable project emerge.

Yet for many thousands of years the simple rules for perspective drawing were not known.

The same applies to constructing an argument that is recognizable as a valid argument. The rules are not ‘Eurocentric’. Once a POV is established there are workmanlike activities to attend to. It really should not concern us who discovered the rules of perspective drawing when our job is to draw something that has never existed before, and it really is invalid to throw around terms like Eurocentric when we address issues that flow from class struggle.

Where capitalism came into being so POV’s on capitalism came into being. Where the proletariat came into being is where a proletarian POV came into being. Intellectuals could stand in these shoes only after they had come into being. That’s not Eurocentric that’s reality.

Of course the current peace movement dealing with pirates is beyond parody!

Several hundred years after capitalism arose we have multiracial proletarian crews running ships built by other proletarians carrying cargoes made by other proletarians some being delivered as aid to an almost non industrialized African country being attacked by pirates; AND YET we have people thinking themselves progressive and even proletarian revolutionaries supporting the pirates (rather than lamenting the fact that we proletarians do not have any red navy’s to protect them).

We have ‘proletarian revolutionaries’ not supporting the bourgeois run navy's protecting proletarian sailors in their place of work!

That degree of foolishness is not really surprising among young pacifists but we have a deadly silence descend from those that ought to know better. For very good reasons liberalism is resorted to in the face of this concrete issue. If it gets out that revolutionaries support bourgeois navy’s doing exactly the same task as would a red navy where will that lead to? This issue could unwind some long standing delusions suffered by the current 'peace movement'.

Obviously this ‘support the pirates’ nonsense could not win any argument on board ships across the globe, nor could it win in ship building yards or in any port facility. The workers in all these industries would emerge and argue the case and win the support of other workers whose ‘products’ sailors transport!

This ‘support the pirates’ condemn the ‘imperialists’ argument buttressed by illegal fishing and illegal dumping stories and half truths is a dead loss.

This is as clear as the sign one sees on free-ways.
‘WRONG WAY, GO BACK.’