As John Lott has so effectively demonstrated time and time again, widespread citizen gun possession is an effective way of increasing public safety. His policy suggestions have never been more relevant than in today’s world where the military has disarmed its troops exposing them to the horrors recently experienced in Camp Hood, where U.S. ships remain far too exposed to pirate attacks.
Yet, an article in the Washington Times today quotes Roger Middleton, a piracy specialist at the London-based Chatham House: “the international community was still ‘solidly against’ armed guards aboard vessels at sea” and goes on to note that “American ships have taken a different line from the rest of the international community.” Remember when Ross Perot sent his own team to Iran to rescue his employees. Americans aren’t immune to self-defense and rarely are as concerned as the “international community” about the root causes that have driven these poor individuals to resort to piracy.
Perhaps, America hasn’t gone quite as crazy as we think.
The celebrations and congratulations over the U.S. Navy’s rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips are well deserved and proper all around. Yet even after the jubilation has quieted down, piracy in the high seas remains a threat to global trade. That’s important for the U.S. Senate to keep in mind when it again considers the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which, as The Wall Street Journal‘s Bret Stephens noted last November, could present some potential obstacles to American naval action against pirates. I wrote an earlier post about this, but this point is worth repeating:
Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates.
Such an approach could only result in wholesale hostage taking. Capt. Phillips’s ordeal has made the danger that would entail. President Obama’s decision to use deadly force was the right one. Neither he nor his predecessors should be constrained in similar situations in the future.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently visited Cuba and licked Casto’s boots, calling him an “inspiring” visionary and an “amazing human being.” (Never mind that racism against people of African heritage is far more pervasive in Cuba than here. Much of Cuba’s population is black. But how many of Cuba’s Communist leaders are black? Almost none. It’s no accident.)
The Obama Administration has broken campaign promises repeatedly and lied about a Supreme Court case that it made a big campaign issue.
Now, as Charles Krauthammer notes in the Washington Post, Obama is going through Europe, badmouthing the U.S. to try and curry favor with the European public. European leaders have responded by stiffing Obama and giving him none of what he asked for (like assistance in Afghanistan). Obama said there must consequences, not just empty words, against North Korea for shooting a missile over Japan, even as he voiced only empty words (“Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something,” he said). The only concrete defense proposal Obama made is to cut the U.S.’s stockpile of nukes and eliminate Alaskan missile defense systems that might be useful against North Korean missiles. As Obama explains, only the U.S. has ever used nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, in a gaffe that most of the press chose not to report, Vice President Biden thanked Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero for his support in Iraq — even though Zapatero is anti-American and not only pulled Spain’s troops out of Iraq, but called on other European leaders assisting the U.S. to stop doing so.
With the U.S. government unable to even remember who its friends and enemies are, it’s perhaps not surprising that Somali pirates have been emboldened to kidnap American seamen and seize our ships in the crucial shipping lanes leading to the Suez Canal. CEI’s Eli Lehrer has come up with a creative solution for the pirate problem.
Welcome to LibertyWeek’s Silver Anniversary with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and Special Guest William Yeatman. Our 25th episode starts with timely events from years past in The Day in Wikipedia, and then moves quickly into the latest, newest New Mexican news about Gov. Bill Richardson’s bondage municipal bond scandal. We return to the salty seas to see some Somali pirates get their karmic comeuppance, listen to the bailout blather du jour coming out of Washington and New York and stand strong against attempts to demonize those violent video games we love so well. With that down, we congratulate the winners of the Golden Globes and finally turn to our Special Guest for a discussion of the President-Elect’s energy and environment team. We round out the show, as always, with an encouraging bit of Olympic News.
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A new year brings a new episode of LibertyWeek, with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and Senior Culture Correspondent Ryan Lynch. We start out by wishing everyone a happy new year and direct them to the new Bureaucrash t-shirt store — with only eleven and a half months of shopping until Christmas, you’ll want to stock up on stylish, revolutionary apparel at Bureaucrash Contraband.
After observing a couple of timely anniversaries, we move on to Scandal Watch, where we raise some questions about the electoral race between current U.S. Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) and onetime SNL funnyman Al Franken. Next it’s off to the high seas where we tangle with Somali pirates and are rescued by the French Navy (who knew they still had it in them?) before confronting Vice President-Elect Joe Biden’s war on the economy. We wind up the headlines with the tale of alleged New York City “skank” Liskula Cohen, and her effort to get the courts to force Google to rescue her from her online tormentors.
Finally, it’s time for Pop Culture with Ryan Lynch, in which the panel examines our favorite books, movies (and graphic novels) that have thoughtful, pro-freedom messages. We end the show, as always, with some fresh Olympic News — this time about octo-lympian Michael Phelps’ latest $1 million endorsement deal in China.
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Ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) would mean a loss of sovereignty and burdensome extraterritorial regulation of U.S. extractive industries. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens provides yet another reason to avoid ratifying the treaty, in light of the recent surge in hijackings by Somali pirates.
Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates.
Silly as this is, at least it would work in its intended purpose — when a boarding party is taken hostage and doesn’t come back! For the boarding party’s late members, however, LOST may need a provision similar to whatever honors the Star Federation accords to red-shirted Enterprise crew members.
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