Pirates Ahoy

I have been reading with a lot of fascination for the last couple of week all of the teeth gnashing and wailing about pirates off the coast of Somalia and how the West is "powerless" to do anything about it. This almost makes me want to puke. I really wonder sometimes if the Christian West wants to or even deserves to survive the 21st century. There is, of course a very simple solution to this problem, although it is messy, not very politically correct, or, oh my gosh might kill pirates and break things. To wit:

1. Take the various naval forces in the region, give them the cover of some UN Security Council Mandate (which would, of course put the Russians and the Chinese on the post, an added bonus) or not. At this point, the power of the U.S. Navy oughta do it, if the rest of the world wants to come along, that's fine too.
   
2. Since there is some legal issue with chasing pirates within a countries so-called territorials waters (links and references below); establish a naval blockade beyond the 12 mile limit of Somalia. Any Somalia vessel of any size not identified and checked in with the naval force will be sunk beyond 12 miles.
3. Give the pirates, government, whoever is supposed to be in charge there 7 days to release all the ships and crews or the urban renewal will begin.
4. Send a carrier battle group and flatten a town or two where pirates are known to be, concentrating on docks, piers, wharves and palaces owned by pirate lords, kings, head thugs or whatever.
5. Repeat as needed.

Now I know there is a lot of hand wringing about the failed state of Somalia, etc and killing innocent civilians or whatever. to which I politely answer TOUGH NOOGIES (I can't print what I really feels since my wife may read this:) how about all of those innocent merchant crewman?

Somalia is going to become another Iraq or Afghanistan, mark my words, but since Billy Bob Clinton screwed it up in 1994, when we should have leveled Mogadishu (it probably would have been tough to tell the difference, I'm sure) and Obamabi is not likely to make war on African Muslim terrorists, it will become the next sewer pit of Al Queda bases. Put together pirates and terrorists and you have a sure recipe for disaster at one of THE MOST important maritime choke points in the world.

And as always, there is historical precedence for this. The Barbary Wars, America's first major overseas war against Islamic terrorists (anyone seeing a theme here) were waged to stop pirate attacks on American commerce, only now its worldwide commerce.

So civilization, as it were, can let the thugs run rampant because we are so wrapped up in our "laws" and "civilization" and watch maritime commerce become expensive and potentially impact a global economic recovery or we can go after these vermin and give them what they deserve by tradition.

We shall see, but I would bet on the pirates winning.....

1) Wikipedia on Piracy
2) White Paper on Piracy from Chatham House, a UK think tank
3) Maritime Terrorism Center