Let me give credit where it is due. God Bless the Navy for their incredible job here. Obama answered his first 3 am call. I’m an eternal optimist so I’ll hope that this is a “speak softly and carry a big stick” policy by Barack. That being said, you can’t just ask people to ignore this situation like he did earlier.

After Barack Obama’s embrace of the troops in Iraq I was actually warming up to the guy, but now that his international bow and flagellate tour is interrupted by a hostage crisis on the high seas, his silence is shameful and embarrassing. There were more pirate attacks this time last year off the coast of Somalia, and yet it is now, for the first time in, what, centuries, that an American vessel has been hijacked by pirates in, what, centuries? The pirates want to see how weak we are, and I fear Barack Obama, with all the nuance he can muster, just may demonstrate exactly how far we can capitulate.

Today, for the first time in a long time, I missed George W Bush. Someone who wasn’t afraid to call an evildoer evil, and when hit in the mouth took the fight to terrorists. I have some problems with how the Iraq war has been handled, but during the Bush administration nobody wanted to hijack our boats and push us around to get paid.

What irks me most is it seems that Barack’s biggest problem is how the pirate’s are crimping his style.

I’ve heard some bad things about Eric Holder, but I agree with this statement.

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

Some on the left might say, “Do you think it right to hold people for years without a trial a a date for setting a trial? You see the problem with terrorism is that it can force you to lose things that define you as a nation.”

But I would counter: Prisoner of War should be applied to actors of a standing army within a nation-state. When we fought in Vietnam, prisoners of war were held under the Geneva convention. Why should terrorists have all the benefits of asymmetric warfare (not having territory to defend, acting outside the interests of any nation state that can be held accountable) without any of the drawbacks (not having a nation state supporting negotiations for prisoners through the UN)? I feel bad for the 17 year old who tossed a grenade in the wrong place at the wrong time (ok not too bad) but for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and those types I have 0 sympathy. What irritates me is the insinuation by the NY Times and others that they have rights under the Constitution.

The problem of following the rules of civilized nation states with regards to international, non-civilized prisoners is exemplified by the piracy problem in Somalia. British patrol ships that captured Somalis had to release the pirates to Kenyan courts, where they will probably get a slap on the wrist at best. And the piracy continues unabated.