Doug

Yeah seems to have been excellently handled by the Navy and SEAL teams. Ever thus to pirates.

As I understand it, Mike, there are no laws preventing them from arming themselves. It's the insurance companies who are refusing to insure unless the crew remain unarmed. IMO, the shipping companies should have the option to send their crews to Front Site or Gunsite or similar for professional training. Insurance companies should consider that because if a pirate abducts an American crew and some or all die or are seriously injured in the process, it seems that families would have cause to sue because the insurer and company not only refused to provide protection from a known danger, but they also kept each crew member from being able to adequately protect himself.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will slow them down much unless we are proactive in going after them. There is an established pattern here and this sort of thing has been going on far too long. Waiting until they're approaching a cargo ship is, in my opinion, practically snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Going after known pirates where they live is what is needed here, but I doubt our government will authorize it.

The recent events may make them more brutal when first seizing a vessel, and this experience with our Navy has taught them a few things. Ideally, it will have taught them, at least, to avoid US ships :)

You're probably right Chris, I'm not up on this much. I also think this will at least make them think twice before picking on ships flying the US flag. If they do capture a US ship again soon, then maybe we should entertain the idea of going after all the pirates where they live. This must be stopped...this ship's cargo was for humane relief, I think food was on to help starving people in that region.

Well Josh I don't necessarily mean ramping up a full-scale war on piracy at this point. Prudence demands that our ships and Navy prepare for the worst, but hope that we've given the pirates enough pause to go pick on someone else.

However, if they decide to start targeting our ships with increased brutality, then waiting for them to attack and expecting merchant crews to fight them off successfully doesn't seem like a prudent approach, nor does expecting our spec ops guys to maintain a 100% success rate with regards to killing pirates and not accidentally shooting hostages.

In that case, I say we hunt them down like the dogs they are.

I think this went so well in large part because of the wisdom and courage of Captain Phillips. Not to take anything away from our Navy guys either, but (logistically) it stands to reason that having to shoot around 1 hostage in a small space is much easier than having to shoot around 10 hostages and 5 pirates intermingled.

I just read this from Sky News in the UK:

Somali pirates have vowed to retaliate for the killings during the rescue operation.

"Every country will be treated the way it treats us," said Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a separate Greek ship.

"In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying," he told reporters by telephone.

"We will retaliate for the killings of our men."

news.sky.com