Quote:
Originally Posted by Cool Beans
So if a group of pirates, run around taking ships and hostages, influence companies and governments to pay the ransom money. Their acts have influenced the US government enough to increase naval patrols in the area, not only that their actions have influenced a host of governments to send warships to combat their actions. Instead of political reasons behind them they are doing it for cash. Coercing fro money, isn't that different from coercing for political change. The pirates actions instill terror into their victims and have influenced several countries into changing the positions of our warships and are Terrorists.
|
By this reasoning then gangs, the mafia etc... are all Terrorists.
I think it's important then to understand what this really means. What can you do to a terrorist that you can't do to a criminal?
Under the Bush Doctrine it means we could strike pre-emptively without regard to Internation law or territory. Even if the Terrorist was a US citizen they could be detained indefinately without council or heabus corpus.
To date most of these attacks appear to have been simple for profit robberies with no loss of life.
Their goal certainly isn't terrorism, for if people and shipping companies were afraid to travel their waters they wouldn't have anyone to hold hostage! Their business model would be obsolete.
Now if we have evidence that money from piracy is being funneled to al Queda for instance, now we have a different situation entirely. I'd be curious to see if the Obama Administration looks to make this connection before using hard military force on the Somalia mainland. Even if nobody really cares about Somalia, the thought of dropping bombs to preempt more robberies has many legal and ethical pitfalls.
-spence