Obama’s Bill Clinton moment
Can you imagine George W. Bush allowing a US Navy destroyer to be held at bay by a few scrawny Somalians stranded in an unfueled lifeboat hundreds of miles from shore? No, me either. Only a Democrat Administration would think that they can negotiate with a bunch of superstitious stone-age terrorists who think they’re going to die the minute their hostage is released. After all, they reneged on their deal with the crew of the Maersk Alabama in the prisoner exchange that was supposed to take place before the Navy arrived. Why should they expect different treatment from our side?
I flashed on a similar situation over 15 years ago when in the Fall of 1994, the Haitian generals held an entire nation hostage. At one point, President Clinton dispatched warships to Port-au-Prince. Shirtless and shoeless Haitian supporters of the generals stood on the docks shouted and waved their machetes at the hulking gray ships. Eventually, the Navy didn’t dock and left the port. The Haitians immediately celebrated a great victory over the United States military.
Clinton became so frustrated that he sent Jimmy Carter to straighten things out – and the 82d Airborne Division orbited Pope Air Force Base waiting for the word to go. Instead of using his military, Clinton paid US taxpayer dollars to the generals to leave Haiti – and Haiti is a tropical paradise and tourist destination today because of it. Huh? It’s not? Nothing has changed? How could I have missed that?
Halfway around the world, with their compadres streaming towards the tiny lifeboat with it’s single hostage, shirtless and shoeless pirates are holding off the US Navy. For three days now, the US has been negotiating and time is running short before more ships with more hostages arrive to complicate the whole situation.
Why doesn’t Obama just drop Jimmy Carter into the lifeboat and exchange him for Captain Phillips? That’d solve two problems at once.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Foreign Policy, Jimmy Carter, Terror War
Hooah!
Drop in Carter? This is the best idea I have heard in a long time.
[…] interesting take on the Somali pirate fiasco This Ain’t Hell calls this Obama’s Bill Clinton moment. Can you imagine George W. Bush allowing a US Navy […]
This is like Speed 2, but more dreadful to watch. The Somali pirate incident(s) is(are) fast becoming a serious embarrassment for the Navy, which was established in the United States to permit freedom of international commerce. At some point even wishy-washy progressives have to realize that the power of overwhelming force has worked in the past. Props to Captain Phillips for trying to take matters into his own hands by jumping in the ocean. I hope he gets out of there sooner rather than later.
Gentlemen, while I would love to see Jimmy Carter exchanged for just about anybody, particularly someone who seems to be worth a sh*t, unfortunately, I doubt that is going to happen. Further, as to using the “power of overwhelming force,” please keep in mind that this would require the Obamacrats to admit that diplomacy doesn’t always work and sometimes you have to go to force – not likely to happen in the short term.
The TOTUS and Hillary were busy sitting in the White House play area outside, discussing world events today!!! A perfect place for them, I think. Meanwhile, a man needs his country.
Amateur hour at the White House.
The bottom line is the decision is going to have to come from the highest level, meaning the pizza eating, non bowling, president in training pants.
I would love to be in the S3 shop right now making the plans, and trust me I have run several through my mind based on the information available.
There are pros and cons to having the other pirates bringing their ships and hostages in the AO. I don’t ever recalled developing plans to overtake a ship, being a land based creature, but I certainly worked on several other situations from airplanes to buildings.
For me, if I was in the Big Boy seat, my military would already have their orders and I would hope they had already gone to work developing such plans without my guidance.
Pulling off a military solution carries a very high risk, mainly loss of life among the hostages. The PR blowback that would come from saving the American while sacrificing the foreigners would be immense so no action should be entered into lightly.
It is easy to armchair general this whole thing and to the people who think it is a matter of simply opening fire they don’t understand that bullets tend to come out of weapons addressed “To Whom It May Concern” more then like the scenes depicted in action movies where they always hit the intended target.
At this time I would caution folks to ease up on the go get ’em rhetoric, but my real reservations come from having no confidence that the CinC even if presented with a viable armed response will consider it, therefore limiting his ability to effectively deal with this.
The bad guys have to believe that nothing is off the table and if you tip your hand otherwise you have ceded control of the situation to them.
LOVE your solution!
“but my real reservations come from having no confidence that the CinC even if presented with a viable armed response will consider it, therefore limiting his ability to effectively deal with this”.
The TOTUS did, however, settle on a dog for the White House today. At least that’s what the LSM told me. Glad he’s got his priorities straight.
UpNorth Says: The TOTUS did, however, settle on a dog for the White House today.
What kind of dog? I heard that it was to be a Coonhound.
Negotiate with Somalis? Perhaps like: “You give up the hostage, alive and healthy; and we’ll give you a pair of oars and 10 minutes to row away. Nothin more, nothin less………
nuf sed