On Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:55:28 -0400, Eisboch wrote:



The primary objective right now is to save the civilian hostage if at
all possible.
Once accomplished, it will be time to minimize future occurrences.

Something that seems to be overlooked here, historically, the Somali
pirates have taken great pains to avoid killing their hostages. They
seem to take a "businesslike" approach to piracy. It's about the
ransom. On the other hand, in the Straits of Malacca, piracy is about
the cargo or ship. Crews regularly go "missing" overboard.

Before we go hastily slaughtering people, we may want to consider the
unintended consequences of our actions. Remember the Islamic Courts
Union? Well, they had ended piracy in the waters under their control.
Perhaps, we should have considered that before we aided Ethiopia's
invasion of Somalia. I've said it before, if you want to play
geopolitical chess, you had better be able to see more than two moves
ahead.