Talks, the Snipers

Saturday the normally guns-ablaze Wall Street Journal editorial page called for patience in dealing with the pirate hostage situation off the coast of Somalia. Turns out they were right. To a point.

By sundown Sunday cargo ship captain Richard Phillips had been held for four days by four pirates on a small boat adrift in the Indian Ocean about 20 miles off Somalia. With each passing day calls for a military solution increased, first in the blogosphere and then in some of the mainstream media. And a military solution is what finally ended the standoff and freed Phillips.

It’s great news for Phillips and his family, for proud Americans, for sailors passing through the area, and for the Obama Administration which got through it’s first potentially problematic international “crisis.” But did it prove that the U.S. should have just blasted the briny bastards in the first place? Probably not.

Late last week the French military staged their own largely successful rescue (one hostage was killed but four others were saved) but only after exhaustive negotiations had broken down.

Likewise U.S. snipers took out the pirates holding Capt. Phillips only after negotiations failed and when one of the pirates pointed an automatic weapon directly at Phillips.

Letting this play out until there was no viable option was smart. That was the Navy’s call. Treating this like a hostage crisis and calling in the FBI was also smart. That was the kind of thing the last Administration might not have done.

This episode was a small but meaningful test for Barack Obama. He promised to be a different type of Commander in Chief than the last — more patient, more reasoned, less trigger-happy. Treating this kind of thing as a law enforcement matter used to get mocked by some commentators. But that’s what this was and just as NYPD snipers have to take over after negotiators fail, Navy SEALs had to kill the pirates in order to save Capt. Phillips once talking hit a dead end.

It might have been more satisfying in the fantasy movie version to have the pirate’s lifeboat blown to pieces by a missile seconds after Navy divers pulled Phillips over the side to safety but life isn’t 24. Armchair generals take note.

While plenty of people wanted to make this about the testing of a new American president it was clear from the outset that it was nothing of the sort.

First of all the pirates in this case (4 on one boat) apparently happened upon the Maersk Alabama as they returned from a failed hijacking attempt made, as is usually the case, with other pirate boats. There is no evidence they targeted the Danish-owned ship because it was American-flagged — or even knew it. Therefore the notion that these four punks (one was a teenager and the others barely older according to Navy sources) were in this to test Obama is a ridiculous fantasy.

But Somalia is not finished with President Obama. The piracy will continue even if none of the relatively small number of American-flagged cargo ships is likely to be attacked again. Far worse though, the lawless nation may very well become a far more dangerous haven for terrorist training camps. That has nothing to do with piracy and has no solution as simple and satisfying as the one the Navy executed this Easter Sunday.