WWHHD?

What would Horatio Hornblower do?

I’m referring to this crap:

NEW DELHI – Separate bands of pirates hijacked two ships and captured their crews, while yet another opened fire on an Indian navy ship before being driven off — clear signs that the brigands roaming the Gulf of Aden are becoming bolder and more violent, officials said Wednesday.

…

[Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Malaysia] said 17 vessels remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 300 crew members, including a Ukrainian ship loaded with weapons and a Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude.

I’ve been ignoring these stories up until now, but this doesn’t make any sense. I realize it’s probably a bad idea for the U.S. to be the world police, but we have traditionally taken on that role when it comes to the high seas, and it hasn’t been a huge burden. 5th Fleet should be finding these guys and seizing or sinking them.

Yet, according to a TimeOnLine article,

Commanders from the US Fifth Fleet and from Nato warships in the area said that they would not intervene to retake the vessel.

It’s not as if this isn’t a serious problem:

Analysts said, however, that the seizure of the Sirius Star exposed the use of foreign warships as “a sticking plaster” that would not solve the problem. “Maritime security operations in that area are addressing the symptoms not the causes,” said Jason Alderwick, a maritime defence analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank, said that the capture was a crucial escalation. “Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You won’t fix this without a political solution.”

Why not a military solution? It shouldn’t be hard to find the ships, and the Somali government—if such a thing exists—shouldn’t have any objections.

There’s got to be something that will work. Convoys? Defended sea lanes? Decoy Q-ships loaded with Marines? Follow the pirates back to their bases and destroy them?

Operations undertaken by the coalition fleet are fraught with legal difficulties, ranging from restrictive rules of engagement to rights of habeas corpus, as the British Navy discovered when it detained eight pirates after a shootout last week.

Meaning what? Is it really no longer legal to go after pirates?

I’ll bet if the were carrying illegal drugs instead of hijacking supertankers we’d be all over them.

Update: The Indian navy seems to have the right idea.