I'm watching the Pirate situation over the last month or so and I have to give it to these guys.  This is pure entrepreneurial capitalism at work.  Start with nothing but a desire to succeed, be irritating enough to get paid off but not obtrusive enough to be killed, scale up the demand as you build your cash reserves and just give a finger to the world.  Get the lawyers around the world arguing over the 'legal' thing to do and you have a globally protected franchise for years. Just agreeing on what to talk about in France could take decades.

Here's the problem with the problem with the Pirates:  They are big enough to be irritating but not big enough to be bothered with.  When you throw in the current style of "sitting and sharing" diplomacy instead of shooting, you give them an incubation period that a bacteria in a Petri dish would die for.  The problem with how we're handling this is that we are trying to apply Legal Logic to a group of savage, militant, and worthless thugs who have figured out a way to launch "BlackHawk Down Part II" in their continued quest for power and riches.  The legal solutions are not going to work now or five years from now.

These Pirates are the LA Gangs on the water.  They have no purpose other than to terrorize and paralyze through aggression and fear to get what they want.   When  you think about it, given the current Global Economy, the risk that insurers like AIG and other re-insurers may not be around to make good on their promises, paying ransom is like having a continuous premium negotiation discussion all the while knowing that the goods are safe.

The Pirates are the epitome of the new asymmetric warfare of the future.  The days of millions of soldiers facing off against each other, shooting straight on until the last ones fall or run away, are gone.  Even in Iraq, you have Hunter Patrols whose mission is to find small groups of the enemy through local intelligence gathering, watch and mark their activity, and then eradicate them.

There are no uniforms on enemies in the future...just weapons that are pointed and weapons that are not.  One of the many challenges in the reformation of Africa is that you have a mimimum of three levels of tribalism, corruption, and thuggery to overcome.

  At the most base level is the warfare that has been going on for centuries among Africa's native peoples:  tribes who protect their territory, dialect, customs, and ways just like the American Indians of 200 years ago.  The leaders of those tribes are funcitionally illiterate savages who still base their rule of law on brute strength, sharp machetes, and terror.

The next level is where some sort of faux goverment has been put in place which gives the illusion of rule of law and one spear one vote democracy but in reality functions no more like a democracy than the drug cartels in Columbia, Chile, and Peru.

The final level is the Pirates.  These are the smart rats in the experiment.  They learn quickly that if they keep on with their reign of terror, pretty soon they will be stealing and killing only themselves.  One of them, after a hard morning of de-limbing challengers sees an Oil Tanker and wonders to himself whether someone would pay to get it back.  The rest of the story is what's going on in the papers today:  Useless, worthless, thugs preying on the work, effort, and innovation of others.  Think UAW union leaders..

Here's what I think we should do:

1. Bring in BlackWater- These guys are offbalance sheet assets that are highly trained operators for situations like this. The Pirate situation is the PERFECT situation for these folks to work in.  They have gunships, weapons, explosives, technology, and love this kind of stuff.  Turn them loose on these guys and let them tie two of them to the bow of supertanker as the first example of what happens if you try to take one of the ships.  Sure it makes us as ruthless as they are but this is war and not a sensitivity class.  You can't reason with these savages and even if you can, you can't trust them.  Kill them all....slowly....visibly...horribly.

2. Put Predator Drones in Use-  Predators don't need vacation time, benefits, Geneva Convention Counseling, or Rules of Engagement Lectures.  The Predators are 24/7/365 Enforcers who can make the little rubber boats disappear 10 miles before they get to to the ship.  What are the Pirates going to do...bring a legal action?  Predators are the new International Air Force. Let these guys work in International Waters and blow the people out of them who would do bad things.  The odds of making a mistake are practically zero because families don't usually go out ten miles from shore in black rubber rafts with gun turretts.

3. Snatch and Grab the Pirate's Families-  I didn't say Kill Them, I said, to relocate them.  It works like this:  You take one ship as a Pirate, we take five family members and relocate them to a place where they have a better life and never see you, the pirate again.  We also shoot ten of your Pirate Buddies for every ship you seize.  Pretty soon, Somalia looks like a Fanny Mae neighborhood and you rebuild it from the ground up.  We've sent nearly 800 million to Somalia over the last 15 years and all it has done is feed and fuel organizations like these.  You can thank our friends at the UN for gangs like this. They actually believe we can transform them into a nation of Rotary Members.

The real danger in the world right now is not groups like the Pirates.  The real danger is groups like European lawyers and diplomats who give the Pirates breathing room.  Rules of Law apply to people who are using Rules of Law and not those who are making it up on their own.  These Pirates are thieves, thugs, savages, and animals.   So, what should we do?

Kill them all.