Somali Pirates

They have struck again, this time picking up a chemical tanker. No word on what chemicals might be on board. The ship had 3 British security guards on it, and we now know who NOT to hire for that job.

The law giving to the US congress the authority to issue letters of marque and reprisal are still on the books. Blackwater seems to be a prime candidate for one. According to international convention, a ship on the high seas is sovereign territory of whatever country who's flag it's flying. If pirates are captured, they are subject to that law, which in the case of the Saudi oil tanker, would likely be beheading. Ships captains are requested to bring any captured pirates to the country in question for trial, but recognizing that this isn't always a practical notion, allows the capturing party to summarily hang them on the spot.

The obvious solution to the problem is to allow merchant ships to go armed, either with personal weapons for the crew, or with larger weaponry mounted to the bow and stern. The problem with this is that when a merchant ship pulls into port, they are subject to the local laws concerning weapons, and the less stable governments are very touchy about who is allowed weapons, to the point that even locking individual weapons up while in port won't keep the local authorities happy.

Designing a shipping container to contain firing ports and a gun nest sounds like fun, placing one on each of the four corners of a merchant ship would be easy enough, provided the ships owners are willing to give up 4 cargo positions for armament. OTOH, back in the day (1802 or thereabouts), a working solution was developed by the US that involved naval bombardment of the pirates stronghold combined with a land attack by marines.

Somalia has no functioning government, which means it would be easy to locate a local panjandrum and pay him enough to sign a treaty giving us the use of the pirates base as a US naval base. All we have to do is go in and control the local vermin, establish a perimiter about 1 mile greater than the range of any local ordnance, and make sure everyone in the neighborhood understands our "zero tolerance" policy regarding perimiter violations. I think this would work out in the long run.