Stupid America is doing it again—looking like a fucking global bully. Here you’ve got four natives and a good captain in a small lifeboat (imagine four Fridays and Captain Crusoe) looking like Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream surround by a monstrous American warship. Oh yeah, it plays really well for the American audience back home, fills them pride knowing those four little darkies are no match for the U.S.S. Terminator. But it don’t look that way to the rest of the world. What they see is a Tiananmen Square being played out on the Indian Ocean. Remember the little Chinaman staring down a Chinese tank? Now you’ve got four little Somali pirates in a lifeboat staring down an American warship.
You know who really loves this shit? Republicans like hubris infected Newt Gingrich who wanted to shoot down little North Korea’s missile. But it’s okay for America to have 1000’s of nukes. These guys love playing the bully (but they themselves are chicken-hawks), and that is what America has been doing, bullying small nations like Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, Iran, etc. We don’t have to talk to others because we got bigger guns. You might have heard some State Department flunky saying on CNN that America doesn’t make deals with terrorists. That the way the American government works. Pass a law and then use the law to justify all further action. Bush was all about that. Pass a law making torture legal then your actions have legal justification. In this case, the U.S Government says its policy is never to make deals with the bad guys because doing so makes the U.S. look weak and like losers, and the pirates like winners. And if everything goes to shit and the captain dies then government will say “Sorry, we were just following policy.”
Take gay marriage for an example (I mean queers and pirates, they're all the same). Pass a law that states gay marriage is illegal and there you go, it’s illegal by decree. Or find in the Bible where it says it’s prohibited, and Voila! it’s wrong. (Oh, but what about the parts of the Bible that say slavery is okay? Like, Leviticus 25:44-46, which says, "Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.) And the Bible is the Republican's favorite game book.
It’s interesting that Republican scum like Gingrich can get on his high-horse about the sanctity of heterosexual marriage but get divorced three times. About his first wife, Jackie Battley, Wikipedia tells us, “She claims he ‘discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.'” What a fucking hypocrite. That’s why in his way of thinking it is okay to beat up on Cuba and North Korea for being bad boys but not to criticize America’s destruction of Iraq. You will get my point if you have read Sophocles’ Antigone. In other words, America very often looks like pigheaded Creon. But you haven’t read it because you don’t read.
Getting back to the pirates, in the U.S. they have been characterized as terrorists, but they are not terrorists. They are pirates and they do what they do for money. As far as I know, unlike the Mexican drug cartels, they try to avoid hurting and killing the people who are on the ships they highjack. In fact, it seems that they are taking most the risks. So what’s the solution? Give them some money and send them on their way. Chris Voss, a former FBI, said “the situation could worsen if the pirates try to bargain their escape by trading Capt. Richard Phillips for fuel. With any luck, that won't happen." What! If all they want is fuel for the captain, give it to them. Oh, I forgot we don’t make deals with terrorist pirates. That wouldn’t be macho-American.
You know the thugs running the U.S. Government could learn something from Capt. Phillips. His thinking is what is called utilitarian (rather than the prideful selfishness that dominates the thinking of the apparatchiks who have been running the U.S. Government for the past couple of generations). Just in case you are an idiot who doesn’t know Defoe’s novel, Greek tragedy or Winslow Homer’s painting, or has never taken a philosophy class, utilitarianism is an ethical system that believes one should act to promote the greatest good. Capt. Phillips sacrificed himself for the greater good of his crew. But U.S. Government is unwilling to lose face just a little bit in order to save the good captain.
Already he has suffered longer than he should have had to. Every effort should have been made to save the good captain, including money. I mean that what insurance is for. But weapons and intimidation are America’s preferred means of negotiating. I’m sure the lifeboat is in the crosshairs of Navy sharpshooters. And yet, what has American hyper-militarism gotten the country thus far? Broke and friendless. It’s no wonder that the Europeans don’t want to get involve in that ugly affair the war in Afghanistan. The reason was clearly seen in the streets of Baghdad during the anniversary celebration of the fall of Saddam Hussein. They were filled with thousand of American hating Iraqis.
The recent movie The Day the Earth Stood Still does a good job of illustrating how America is seen by the rest of the world and by millions of Americans. A totally militarized nation not unlike that of Hitler’s. In the movie you see a paranoid, arrogant American government sending armed predator drones after the aliens—to no effect—like the ones used to blow up villages, and the men, women, and children in them, in Afghanistan. And a drone circles above that little lifeboat with its 5 puny inhabitants in the Indian Ocean. America loves to show off its Terminator-like weapons of war, but in doing so we have lost our humanity. The fact is we are not a very attractive nation and have little to offer the rest of the world except for having become the world’s largest refugee camp. And now even if America is able to rescue the good captain but at the loss of the lives of the pirates, it will come off looking like Goliath and the pirates looking like four Davids. In this case, romance favors the pirates, not the United States Navy.
And you know that whether you’re a good pirate or a bad pirate depends on what side you are on. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Richard Grenville are famous Elizabethan pirates. In the eyes of the English they were the good guys. If you know anything about Christopher Columbus you will know that he was as much a pirate as the Somalis, just on a bigger scale. You might recall that pirates in the old days raided cities as well as boats. For example, “During his second voyage, Columbus and his men instituted a policy in Hispaniola which has been referred to by numerous historians as genocide. The native Taino people of the island were systematically enslaved and murdered. Hundreds were rounded up and shipped to Europe to be sold; many died en route. For the rest of the population, Columbus demanded that all Taino under his control should bring the Spaniards GOLD. Those that didn't were to have their hands cut off” (“Christopher Columbus,” Wikipedia). One of the remarkable revelations in The Conquest of Paradise by Kirkpatrick Sale is how often Columbus talks about obtaining GOLD. But I forgot, you don’t know any of that because you don’t read novels, visit museums, or don’t know much about history.
Finally, it’s clear to the rest of the world that the purpose of the world’s largest armada, the U.S. Navy, is to serve America’s political and economic interests, and that’s all, just as Columbus served the interests of Spain. Fuck the natives. And let’s not forget that British, French, and Italian imperialism played an active role in the region that is now Somalia. In fact, colonialism (the West’s pirating the rest of the world) would not have been possible without the navies of Europe. Remember the U.S. Navy cruise missiles landing in Baghdad when America decided to raid Iraq for Israel, black gold, and other forms of war profiteering? The rest of the world hasn’t forgotten. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi widows haven’t forgotten. So America really does look silly when it starts rocking upon its high horse of outrage concerning rag-tag pirates of Somalia.
